


Non-Disclosure Agreement

by headbuttingbears



Category: Fantastic Beasts and Where to Find Them (Movies)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Amnesia, Angst, Anxiety, Canon-Typical Violence, Claustrophobia, Extortion, F/M, Flashbacks, Hurt/Comfort, Legilimency, Mystery, Post-Canon, Slow Burn
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2018-04-05
Updated: 2018-04-26
Packaged: 2019-04-18 15:06:34
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 4
Words: 38,417
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/14215764
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/headbuttingbears/pseuds/headbuttingbears
Summary: "Grindelwald has been less than forthcoming. I wantyouto tell me what happened to me." | Percival Graves needs answers, but he gets more than he bargained for when he turns to Queenie Goldstein for help.





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> References past Queenie/Jacob.
> 
> While I have—as always—attempted historical accuracy, expect mistakes if not outright divergences both from reality and canon. For instance: there is no Legilimency Society in this fic (the fuck, JKR?), nor do the Goldsteins live in Chelsea (THE FUCK, JKR? YOU CAN'T SEE CENTRAL PAR-).
> 
> Given how old this fic is, expect re-appearances of certain... ideas that I've used in other fics. And if you're familiar with my writing, you'll find this fic very _me_. I'd apologize but I'm not sorry for either.
> 
> Finally, thanks to blithesea for reading this a hundred billion years ago, and, as always, to Jenny.

There were too many sounds. That was the problem: too many sounds, too much happening. Breaths rattled in and out of lungs that felt too small to contain air that was too hot in a place that was too-

 _Now, now, Mr. Director, none of that,_ Grindelwald said suddenly from close by. Too close; Graves felt him exhale as he spoke, a cloud of moist air that settled over his face like a smothering mask. The rasp of his own breathing grew louder in his ears as the air grew staler; how much was left? How much could be left?

"Graves?"

A counterpoint to his trapped-rat worrying: that sound. That rasping. It was too loud to be coming from him alone. Bouncing around him in the dark, it was too regular to be human. A long dark note that finished sharp and high.

"Graves."

Where was it coming from? Even if he'd been able to move, to turn his head or roll his eyes, it would've made no difference: there was nothing to see. Nothing he _could_ see. No runes to decipher, weaknesses in his surroundings to examine or exploit. Just the dark, total and unchanging, and his limbs stiff with magic, and his heart racing like a whipped horse on its last legs.

"Director Graves."

Fresh sweat beaded all over his body at the sound, chilling his bare skin despite the crowded heat. Like Grindelwald, the sound had drawn closer; there was a sense of movement over his legs, an unnatural disturbance in the air, and the urge to move, to fold himself up like a pillbug, was overwhelming. And impossible.

The rasping stopped.

 _No,_ I _never start at the bottom,_ Grindelwald said, smile audible. A smile meant for society functions, for correcting mistaken assumptions with a cool politeness. Graves had practiced that smile in the mirror for hours before his first MACUSA party, when people were still misled by his chubby-cheeked youthfulness, but Grindelwald-

His hands curled into fists.

_Turn him over._

Grindelwald made it look-

_Hold still-_

"Percival!"

He inhaled sharply, deeply, and held it as the dream—memory?—popped like a soap bubble, leaving behind little more than a sticky film of discomfort across his mind. The rasp ceased; he'd been unconsciously scratching at the lacquered surface. Everyone was staring at him, but that was nothing new.

 _Nothing unusual, nothing to be concerned about_ , he reminded himself. They'd been staring constantly, more or less obviously, since his first day back to work. Two weeks later, he should've been used to it, but he wasn't. And now he'd given them reason to stare. Again.

Rather than focus on that, he ducked his head and fought to get a grip, slow his breathing, focus on how it had been a Wednesday. He'd discharged himself from the hospital on a Monday, and been back at work by Wednesday. He remembered that.

They were still staring at him, and he was staring at the great MACUSA seal on the table as his breathing slowed, and since nobody was saying anything at all he knew he was the one who was supposed to speak. The papers were before him; that was his signature; those were his notes, but they were all so... unfamiliar. Was that really his handwriting? It looked like something Grindelwald could've scribbled in his place. Had he brought the wrong notes?

"Graves?" Picquery prompted, which was more generous than he would've expected of her, but instead of responding the way he ought to—nonchalantly assertive, as if he hadn't been somewhere else completely—he licked his lip instead, scars pulling with the small movement.

He showed weakness where none would be tolerated.

_What's my line?_

A mistake.

She raised a hand, eyes locked on his. "Give us the room, please."

The sound of two dozen chairs scraping noisily across the floor made a muscle near his eye jump but he remained otherwise unmoved as the rest of the president's council took their time clearing out. Doubtless wondering how much longer Picquery would put up with him.

_This is the third time today._

_He hasn't been the same since... well, you know._

_Look at him, you can tell-_

_Should've just let him go._

"You look like hell," she said when the double doors to the conference room closed at last, shutting out the whispers and the sly glances. There was a shimmer in his peripheral vision, a tingle of static across his skin as she cast an anti-eavesdropping charm. "When's the last time you got any sleep?"

"Last night." It wasn't a lie. They'd had an agreement, before, about what sort of lies he would tell her and what sort he wouldn't. Plausible deniability was important in the upper ranks of government. He'd had a better grip on the limits of that agreement before- before December. He was fairly certain it didn't extend to his personal difficulties.

At least it didn't any more, if it ever had in the first place.

She leaned forward, hands clasped loosely atop the brief they'd been reviewing. The one he'd been supposed to make recommendations about—he remembered now. That was his handwriting after all. What he didn't remember was it being such an untidy scrawl. His mother would be appalled.

"When's the last time you got any rest?" she asked with a tilt of her head.

It would give him away to do it, but he couldn't stand looking at her any longer. That practiced concern. He dropped his gaze first, briefly rubbing a hand over his mouth before he spoke. "If you want a list of candidates to replace me-"

"I don't need one, and that's not what I asked." It would've been better if she'd snapped it instead of sounding so suddenly exhausted as she continued, "Besides, I wouldn't be replacing you, I'd be firing you, and we both know if I did that now it wouldn't play well in the papers." Her smile was a shared secret, wry and just as planned as her concern had been, but it used to work on him.

"More time off." The words were flat in his mouth, tasteless as clean parchment even as his heart began to pick up speed at the thought. His apartment was more spacious but far emptier than MACUSA headquarters, stuffed to the gills with honeycomb offices and worker bees and all their manufactured distractions.

"You didn't take any in the first place," she said, smile briefly twisting into something unhappier. "What did they say at Saint Dymphna's?"

"The same as before." He barely kept the sigh out of his voice as he hunched in his chair and fought the urge to fidget. The healers—three aged witches who'd all taken a turn at poking and prodding and generally irritating him—had squabbled like chickens over a corn niblet. This potion, that spell, _No, Fauna, that's for the Addle-Pate curse, silly woman_... Endless. Beyond annoying.

_The mind is a tricky thing. Nothing for it but to hope it fixes itself._

Utterly unhelpful.

"A pensieve is still out of the question?" And now it seemed it was Picquery's turn to suggest things, as if he hadn't considered something so obvious already.

"A pensieve uses intact memories," he reminded her, straightening the already neat pile of papers before him. "In order to draw anything out I'd need to be able to remember it in the first place or the spell fails. It would be like-"

"Trying to paint a landscape of a place you've never seen?"

He paused. "Something like that," and in his voice were weeks of wasted effort. Countless extra hours spent pouring over internal files and field reports, lurid tabloid articles and dull department memos, all in hopes of jogging something loose in his mind about what exactly Grindelwald had done to him. When he'd captured him; how it had been accomplished; if there had been accomplices. A host of unknowns stalked Graves during his waking hours, peeking out at him from behind every suspicious leer or pitying wince he received at work. And then at night-

He hadn't been lying. He slept regularly, but he wasn't getting any rest. He wasn't getting any _answers_.

"And they've ruled out a memory charm? Never mind." Picquery waved her hand at his sour expression. "I'm just repeating things you've already thought of."

Nodding with his head in his hand was awkward, but he did it anyway, and with little enthusiasm before he closed his eyes. It had crossed his mind more than once that Grindelwald might've cursed him into forgetfulness. To conceal his plot, or the details of how he'd transformed himself so thoroughly. But they—aurors he'd handpicked for the job, the witches at Saint Dymphna's who specialized in the mental arts—had checked him over repeatedly and found no residual sign of Grindelwald's magic on him. The wizard himself was an ocean away, back in Europe and thoroughly beyond his reach.

"He's in Bulgaria somewhere, isn't he? Grindelwald."

"Yes. How long he'll remain there is anyone's guess." Her eye-roll spoke volumes about the low opinion she—and the rest of MACUSA—had for the European insistence on extradition over a far more local execution. "And before you ask, no, I can't get you in to see him. Anyway, he's a prick, you know he wouldn't give you anything useful."

They'd both listened to the records—chockablock with Grindelwald's cryptic turns of phrase, smugness dripping from every riddle he lobbed over the table at every interrogator they put in a chair across from him.

Until at last, after three days' worth of airy conversation, he abruptly gave them Graves's location.

That haunted him too: how exactly he'd been found. There were records, of course—MACUSA loved its bureaucracy the way the Ministry of Magic loved elections—but he knew better than anyone how easily records could be changed, how situations could be smoothed out into something presentable. Something legal. He'd done his fair share of editing in his career, of his own work and others'; he could spot the redactions.

And Grindelwald did nothing spontaneously, he thought, rubbing his scarred upper lip. A reason for everything. A feint, a trade-

"It really is a shame he's such an excellent occlumens," she said, more thoughtful than bitter, and entirely oblivious to the Graves's growing mistrust. "If he weren't, someone skilled enough could probably scoop the answers right out of his head."

His hand dropped away to lie heavily against the parchment, over the strange shuddering loops of his signature at the bottom of some report. "Veritaserum wouldn't work on someone like him." Nor on Graves himself. He'd looked into it.

"No, I should think it wouldn't. Not on a mind like his," she said with a respect that wasn't grudging enough, by Graves's measure. "Insane, of course, but brilliant. Willful. Besides, they do things differently over there. Durmstrang... You've heard the rumors. Dark arts taught in the classroom, hexes from the cradle. Maybe it's no surprise he turned out the way he did."

"They learn the mental arts as well. Not just occlumency." He'd gone over the reports a hundred times, listened to the records just as many. But something in what she said was like the flare of a latent ember in the cold hearth of his memory. "Scamander mentioned something about it in his interview."

"The redheaded Brit with the suitcase full of property damage?"

He nodded. "He recognized Grindelwald somehow. Said it was the way he zeroed in on his connection to Albus Dumbledore, but..." He shook his head. What had he said? How Grindelwald had looked at him as if he were trying to read his mind.

He'd had a very particular way of looking at a person just before he began to peel their thoughts back. As if he were looking for the ripest orange to take the skin off-

A tremor ripped through Graves, pushed him to his feet in one ungraceful motion, chair barking as it skidded back behind him. "With your permission, then, Madame President, I'll take a week off. Just to... sort out some loose ends." The words were like ashes in his mouth, no matter that his mind was humming with something other than anxiety or suspicion. There was something there, he was positive. Something in Scamander's interview, something to do with Grindelwald and the mental arts. He was sure of it.

"Take January to get _yourself_ sorted out." Gone was the concern from earlier, the nearly chummy idle talk of Grindelwald's background. How long had he been standing there thinking?

He bowed his head as a wave of his hand sent his papers slipping neatly into pockets in his black briefcase, joined promptly by the note-taking quill that went to every meeting with him. The only hesitation came from Graves himself, feeling as though there was a touch of finality to the moment, that he ought to say something. But what? Despite his meager efforts, there was no point pretending he was doing anything other than looking into a very personal matter. Was he supposed to thank her for letting him or apologize for the necessity?

Thankfully she took the matter out of his hands entirely. "Don't worry, Graves," she said, eyes hard. "I'll have Goodspeed fill in for you in the meantime. I'm sure no one will take it amiss if it should slip out that you're further investigating the Grindelwald case. It'll leak to the papers, of course, but so much the better for both of us. Starting the new year with a boost in public opinion couldn't go wrong for either of us."

Silence Goodspeed. Not one of the Original Twelve, but her family had made a name for itself nonetheless through sheer blind patriotism. Picquery _had_ said she didn't need a list of replacements from him.

"As you say, ma'am." He managed to keep the bitterness out of his voice. Mostly.

 

 

If Newt Scamander was capable of answering a question point-blank the first time around then Graves had dozed off long enough to miss an example of it.

Stool parked in the center of the doorway so that he had an unobstructed view down the long hallway of the records department, Graves rolled the glass ball between his palms for the third time that afternoon. It contained a record of Scamander's interview as conducted by Cornelia Allegan, an old hand in the department. Picquery had wanted thoroughness; the goose egg he was holding proved she'd gotten it.

Listening to Scamander detail the precise effects of overseas travel on the storage capabilities of a Niffler's pouch led Graves to believe Allegan deserved a raise for her endurance. A commendation at the very least.

He rolled the ball faster, the glass warm against his skin as he sped through what he knew to be a lengthy digression and wished he'd let his secretary order him one last lunch before she stopped being his secretary. At last he reached Scamander's second arrest and appearance before Congress—his second interaction with Grindelwald. But, save for Grindelwald confiscating his suitcase, they hadn't interacted; Picquery had had more one-on-one contact with him at that point.

What followed was a very meandering account of Scamander's interrogation by Grindelwald, the contents of which Graves had long since fed to his very hungry memory. It might have been his equally hungry stomach that distracted him, or his frustration over Scamander not knowing the meaning of the word "brevity," or plain fatigue. Whatever was to blame, Graves tuned out the majority of Scamander's words until, all of a sudden, his voice seemed to take on a new volume and Graves sat up from his weary slouch, one foot braced against the doorjamb.

"It's very exciting being a wanted criminal, but not the sort of life I ever imagined leading, you know," Scamander said, a burble of laughter in his voice as he continued with affected drollness, "even briefly. So many things to consider! Much like looking after an Occamy—you know it's going to be difficult, but you never know exactly _how_ difficult until you're up to your eyeballs in eggs, which is usually about when you start to wish you had some help-"

"And did you? Have some help. Not with the Occamy."

"Yes, thank Merlin. Tina's sister, Queenie, lovely witch, was able to give us a hand or else we never would've managed, the place was swarming like-"

"Managed to escape MACUSA headquarters, you mean." Now that she had him back on track, Allegan would not be distracted.

"Yes, precisely that. We all got back into the suitcase—it's rather spacious, you know, which took some doing—and I presume she carried us out the front door."

Graves frowned, ignored his grumbling stomach, and slowly rolled the ball counterclockwise. Not too much, just enough to back up a bit and confirm what he already knew: Grindelwald had taken the suitcase to parts unknown. He let it play, enduring the rest of Scamander's rambling interview with a great deal of eye-rolling, until again he reached the point of escape after the confrontation with the aurors, when the suitcase appeared anew. Produced seemingly out of thin air by Tina's sister.

He listened closely to the rest of the interview with fresh ears, hoping for further details about where or how the suitcase re-entered the action, but there was nothing. Taken, and then returned.

Record held loosely in one hand, it ceased to play, though Scamander's words yet echoed in his head. The inconsistency was glaring now that he bothered to take note of anything that wasn't Grindelwald himself. Or Grindelwald _as_ himself.

Figuring out where the suitcase had disappeared to was easy. If Grindelwald had been half as committed to pretending to be him as the _Ghost_ 's scandalized front page alleged, then he'd secured it in Graves's old office. Scamander's suitcase by that point was infamous—no one would've bat an eyelash at the Director of Magical Security taking possession of it.

But that meant Queenie Goldstein had removed it from that same office, which Graves himself had taken great pains to ward. And she was not, nor had ever been, an auror. How had she gotten in? Furthermore, how had she known to try for it in the first place?

The straight-forward mystery of it was enough to pique his interest. He stretched, rolled back shoulders that ached from hunching; a flick of his fingers ended the muffling spell he'd cast so that the record's sound wouldn't carry past the booth. The built-in sound-proofing, both natural and magical, wasn't much good if the door was open. He needn't have bothered—he'd been there for a solid hour and hadn't seen another soul besides the taciturn old Records Keeper, Travers, manning the desk and doing the jumbles in that morning's edition of the _Ghost_.

He'd moved on to the crossword by the time Graves reached him; his pencil kept scribbling as he reached out an eager hand for the dormant record rolling over the desk towards him, the log book sliding forward of its own accord for Graves's signature. "Another one, sir?"

"Same case number. Name of Goldstein, Q."

" _Queenie_ Goldstein?"

Graves's eyebrows rose at the change in tone as he painstakingly signed his name. From professional curiosity to personal shock thanks to a single letter. After all the records he'd reviewed over his career, that was the first time Travers had shown any real emotion. He hadn't thought the wizard capable of anything besides general disgruntlement. "Do you know her?"

"I don't- Not _personally_ , no," Travers said, shifting in his seat and flushing. "She brings me coffee sometimes. Does it for most everyone, I suspect, but she always remembers how I like it, and she stays for a chat when that boss of hers doesn't have her running all over the place willy-nilly." Before Graves could seize the opportunity to press the suddenly chatty wizard further, Travers blurted out, "I can't imagine her being involved in any sort of dark magic. She's no sorceress."

"I never said she was."

Another flush warmed bristly cheeks typically the color of old milk, but it was a defensive heat this time, not a boyish fondness. "I know my numbers, Mr. Graves, and I know she had nothin' to do with whatever it is you're digging into."

"She must make an excellent cup of coffee," he said neutrally, which only seemed to further irritate the wizard.

"You knew her, you'd understand."

It was tempting to remind Travers that a moment ago he'd admitted _he_ didn't know her. Graves chose to remind him of his job instead. "The record?"

Travers gave him a miffed look, but his chattiness had clearly worn off; he rose creakily from his chair without another word.

While he waited for Travers to produce the second record, Graves reviewed what he knew about the reportedly friendly Miss Queenie Goldstein. He'd never forgotten that Tina had a sister, but what he knew about her could be counted on one hand with most of the fingers chopped off: younger, also worked for MACUSA. The end. Tina herself had joined the aurors shortly before he'd become head of the East coast; if he was ever going to learn anything about her home life it would've been then, in that brief period of time when he still had the luxury of caring about individual aurors.

He would've needed the willingness as well. Probably why he hadn't learned anything personal about anyone despite frequent status updates. If it wasn't related to the job, he hadn't wanted to know about it.

It was with this in mind that he returned to the booth, carrying the second record a good deal more carefully than he had the previous one. Travers had rubbed off on him—he treated them all with as much care as he didn't show visitors to his department, cupping each record in his hand the way one might a friendly sparrow.

Or maybe it was something else that prompted him to be more mindful. For the first time in ages he was interested in getting to the heart of a mystery that wasn't—strictly speaking—his own.

Whatever he'd expected of Queenie Goldstein's interview, it wasn't bemusement. Allegan—she'd conducted all the interviews of the major figures involved in uncovering Grindelwald's plot—had reminded Miss Goldstein of the agreement she had with MACUSA: full immunity from prosecution, including one extremely serious Rappaport violation, in exchange for her complete honesty. The same deal had been struck with Scamander, who otherwise would've faced a record-setting number of charges related to the illegal possession and transport of magical creatures.

"Uh huh, I remember," Miss Goldstein had chirped. "So what'd you wanna know?"

What had followed had been... brief.

When asked about her position in the Wand Permit Office, where she'd been stuck for many years, she said, "Um, well, it's a job." He could imagine an indifferent shrug. "I'm not the ladder-climber type like Tina, I just like to get paid and help out when I can. Is that awful of me?"

Instead of using that as a jumping-off point for further probing, Allegan assured Goldstein that that was a perfectly reasonable outlook. Not unusual to find a way to bond with the interview subject, but it still surprised him that she'd let slide such an obvious opportunity for more questions.

The little else there was of the interview proceeded in much the same fashion. On why she helped Scamander, Goldstein would only say, "Tina wanted to, and I wasn't gonna let her go off by herself with an oddball and a No-Maj. How could I? She's the only family I got."

Asked how she got the No-Maj away from a trained obliviator, she simply laughed. "Gosh, I hear a lot of gossip, you know? Just 'cause of my job, I guess, I'm all over the place," she said with a hint of polite embarrassment. "I reminded Sam of one or two delicate items he wouldn't want goin' any further, and he let me take Jacob—I mean the No-Maj, Mr. Kowalski. It was kinda mean of me but it's not like I had a choice, right? And I never would've gone through with it. Spreading it around, I mean. I'm not that sorta witch, ask anyone."

Allegan readily agreed.

The record had barely warmed from his skin by the time Graves had listened to the interview twice in its entirety. Unlike Scamander, Miss Goldstein was not prone to tangents. Besides revealing that she'd learnt of the suitcase's location and secured it via the No-Maj—not even Grindelwald had thought to guard against something as simple and nonmagical as brute force—she said very little of substance. In fact, the majority of her answers consisted entirely of second- or third-hand information—she overheard a conversation, she was told something in confidence, she noticed someone with someone else.

Rocking back on the stool, head resting against the doorframe, Graves puzzled over what he'd heard, wishing—not for the first time—that there were images to accompany the audio recording. As it was, he could only conclude a very few things.

First: her pronounced Brooklyn accent—something Tina had clearly taken great pains to lose—masked a keen set of observational skills. He could draw up a list of aurors who could stand to take a lesson from her.

Second: Miss Goldstein, despite appearing frank and unrehearsed, was concealing _something_. Her initial nervousness in the early part of the interview was entirely justified for a witch of little talent swept up in a front-page investigation; it had duly faded as she warmed to Allegan, and Graves wasn't left wondering how Travers came to be so defensive of her.

But the degree to which she was charming did not explain how exactly she knew everything she did, and why Cornelia Allegan, an auror with decades of experience in interrogation, had failed to follow up on any of her obvious pretenses.

Not least of all: "Who told you Tina was going to be executed?"

"I dunno, I must've just heard someone mention it to someone else," she'd said, voice quavering faintly. "People gab around me all the time 'cause they think I'm just some nobody. Course I _am_ just a coffee witch."

That Allegan had blithely accepted such a preposterously simple explanation was unthinkable, and yet, without pressing for any details at all, she did exactly that. News traveled fast in MACUSA, but it wasn't instant. Not to mention that Goldstein had been fifty floors away or more when Grindelwald made the snap decision to execute her sister and Scamander mere minutes after interrogating them.

A third listen to the interview only reinforced his belief that she wasn't being completely honest while simultaneously bolstering his respect for her ability to guide a conversation. She was endlessly self-deprecating, but only in a way that reinforced her general unimportance: references to her low station, her lack of skill compared to her sister, her poor memory. For someone who knew a great deal about what was going on, she could never recall who had told her.

Granted, everything she said about herself could be true, but the possibility that her memory might be so terrible as to rival his own wasn't worth entertaining.

"Anything else, sir?" Travers said, eyebrows twitching in surprise when Graves held the record out for him to take instead of simply rolling it across the desk as he had the others.

"No. That'll be all."

Enough listening; it was time Graves conduct his own interview. There was no denying that, superficially speaking, the puzzle Queenie Goldstein presented had nothing to do with his problems, but that did nothing to weaken the thrum in his veins that told him there was something about her involvement that was worth looking into.

Maybe he was just desperate, flailing, grabbing on to the first thing that came to hand. Maybe Goldstein really did have a tendency to be in the right place at the right time to hear the right information.

Too many years in law enforcement had left Graves with a hearty distrust of coincidence. Besides, it was simple enough to figure out: he'd start by asking her how she'd come to learn so many things she had no business knowing at all. Surely it wouldn't take long to figure out, and then he could return to _his_ business.

 

 

"What do you mean she's not here?"

The wizard presently in charge of the Wand Permit Office, Joseph Abernathy, was having a difficult time not staring at his scars. While his nervous blinking was familiar to Graves, it did not improve his mood.

"The thing is, sir, Queenie—Miss Goldstein—she doesn't work here anymore."

For the second time, Graves found himself being forced to zig where he expected to zag when it came to Goldstein. "What department has she been reassigned to? I need to speak with her."

"That's just it." Abernathy licked his lips nervously, eyes flicking down at Graves's empty hands.

No one had ever expected him to pull his wand and start cursing people left and right at the drop of a hat before Grindelwald's performance in the subway. His irritation only grew when he huffed and Abernathy took a step back.

"She doesn't work at MACUSA at all. Period. She's gone."

"Did she resign or was she let go?"

"Let go? You mean fired?" Abernathy's eyes, if possible, grew wider. "Are you kidding? I'd never fire Queenie! No one would, she's a total bomb- Er."

Judging purely by her voice, he'd been picturing a bubbly young gossip with a matronly slant. Charming, certainly, and harmless enough, but perhaps unremarkable in the looks department. Likewise her talents, if her position was any indication, were middling. Certainly nothing special compared to her older sister.

"She's what?"

Abernathy's reaction, however, meant a slight adjustment of expectations.

"She's a-a heck of a witch," he finished lamely.

"Hm. Then she left of her own accord." He looked the red-faced wizard over with just enough consideration to make him sweat. "Did it have anything to do with your... warm regard?"

"Now wait just a minute, Mr. Graves," he said, raising a hand. "I was never anything but strictly professional with Queenie, unlike some of the other gents around this place. And if she ever had any complaints, I never heard 'em. Except for the ones about the toilets, that is, but I can't do anything about the poltergeist."

 _Toilets?_ Graves surveyed the gloomy Wand Permit Office and its continually shifting stacks of licenses and applications, tickets and renewal reminders. Leaky pipes, perpetual disorganization, endless rows of desks occupied only by magical stamps that worked unsupervised—nothing had changed from the last time he'd visited some years ago. Tina had been banished down here for a reason.

"What exactly was her job?"

Abernathy made a face as he started ticking things off on his fingers. "Filing, some general paperwork, license processing, bathrooms and offices-"

"Bathrooms?"

"Jinx-removal, mostly," Abernathy said before he coughed. "S-some cleaning. Light cleaning."

"All that _and_ she got to make coffee for people?" No wonder she'd sounded so happy whenever she mentioned serving coffee in other departments. It must've been a treat to get out from under the low ceiling, which seemed to creep lower by the minute. "What about enforcement? You ever let her go out in the field?"

"She wasn't cleared for it, not like her sister was. I asked her once about getting certified, but you know witches," Abernathy said, hands slipping into his trouser pockets as he leaned conspiratorially towards Graves. "Some of them don't have the stomach for that kind of action."

He thought of Miss Goldstein's interview, how casually she'd recounted breaking into his office, and wondered if perhaps she'd been misleading more people than just Allegan for longer than anyone suspected.

"Did you need anything else, Mr. Graves?" Abernathy called to him after he turned on his heel and made his way back to the elevator. The door rattled open, and Abernathy must've taken his pause as consideration of his question, because he pressed further. "Is Queenie in some kinda trouble?"

A house elf sat waiting for him to enter, and as usual the car wasn't so small as he always imagined. Enough room that he could stand in the middle without touching the elf, and it had grates, not solid doors or walls. More than enough air.

"No," he said, ignoring the second question in favor of pulling out his pocket watch and naming a floor for the elf. The day was getting on without him, but there should be someone left in Administration to pull Goldstein's address. And if not... he still remembered how to use the directory.

He shut his eyes as the elevator swayed, and did his level best to focus on the possibility he might have to dig up Queenie Goldstein's information himself instead of on how narrow the compartment really was. As if he were back in the field and running down a tip, he thought with greater enthusiasm than the idea normally would have merited. Distracting enough he almost didn't notice how close the air became, nor how tightly clenched his fists were.

 

 

The clock on the night stand said it was indecently early, and he didn't technically have a job to report to, but that didn't stop Graves from making his usual start. By the time he'd shaved, applied the prescribed healing salves, dressed, and had three cups of gut-rotting coffee at the nearest diner, he was ready to face the day. It couldn't be any worse than whatever he'd faced last night.

Resolving to focus on why he was standing across the street from Queenie Goldstein's apartment building, he pushed away the blurred impressions of tight spaces and helplessness that lingered from the night before. The hand he scrubbed over his face was trembling; undoubtedly one cup of coffee too many.

The address Administration had given him was further uptown than he typically traveled, but any change of scenery—anywhere Grindelwald hadn't set foot—was welcome. Unfamiliar No-Maj hustled by on mid-morning business, sparing not a glance for him as Graves had walked the neighborhood and formulated a plan of attack.

The mean sunlight of a late-December morning threw the ridiculousness of his suspicions into sharp relief. Allegan had conducted a dozen or more interviews by the time she got to Queenie Goldstein—maybe she'd been off her game. It would not be a stretch to say he was as well. There was a reason he wasn't back at MACUSA headquarters attending a regularly-scheduled meeting with the rest of the department heads.

Silence Goodspeed would be doing that. Doing _his_ job. And he was here, pacing like a junior auror sweating over his first warrant. Chasing down- could he even call it a lead? What did he really have on Goldstein? No discernible connection to Grindelwald. A sloppy interview and compliments from a couple of equally low-level employees. The WPO was in no danger of falling apart without her; the performance reviews he'd skimmed were thoroughly middle-of-the-road and held nothing more noteworthy than a request for a Remembrall when she first started, which she'd returned by her next review. Tina qualified for the aurors; Queenie's wandwork left her in the literal basement.

Her exit interview had hinted at an awareness of that. Polite but characteristically vague, with no complaints at all, not even about the toilets, Goldstein had referred to a simple desire to move on to something new after a bland expression of gratitude for being allowed to serve her country.

The bottom line was he had nothing. Nothing but his gut, which said over and over that Goldstein was simply _too_ unexceptional for someone who knew _far_ too much. His mind, on the other hand-

His mind-

 _You have a remarkably well-maintained mind, Mr. Director,_ Grindelwald purred, grip tight on his chin. _Perhaps I shouldn't be surprised, considering the rest of you, but in my experience most Americans are more... haphazard. Casual in their thinking. A product of substandard education, I assume._

Graves sucked in a rough lungful of air and pushed his way through the crowd, crossing the street nearly at a run, heedless of traffic or the dirty ankle-deep slush, scarf flapping in the wind. The blaring horns blew away the last tatters of the dream, the phantom fingernails digging into his skin, but the irritated No-Maj shouting at him made his fingers twitch for his wand. He clenched his gloved hands instead and ruthlessly quashed the unfamiliar impulse to hex them.

A pair of strange No-Maj women hurried down the front steps, giving Graves the dubious looks he was used to as they passed by him where he stood at the bottom of the stoop. Neither of them bore any resemblance to Tina Goldstein; her sister had to be inside. Without a job, where else would she be but at home?

He'd apparated cross-town just to talk to her, and now he hesitated? Disgust twisted a stomach already curdled by burnt coffee; he flexed his cramped fingers free of the fist they'd curled into. He would approach her, speak with her, do a better job than Allegan. He would figure out precisely how she'd come to know so much, prove to himself if no one else he was still capable of conducting a thorough investigation, and then-

And then what?

_I just like to get paid and help out when I can._

He took a deep breath and dug out his pocket watch. _Late for work_.

 

 

"Queenie!" The old No-Maj landlady bellowed up the stairs before giving him another suspicious glower. "You got a visitor!" She didn't move out of the way until there was a clatter of footsteps overhead, and even then he only got as far as a toe over the threshold.

"Coming, Mrs. E," called a familiar voice from floors above. A light patter down a flight of stairs, and down again, and Graves had the sudden realization that he should've pulled her entire file himself instead of relying on others to cherry-pick bits of it for him.

"Oh my." Queenie Goldstein paused on the stairs to look at him, brushing a stray golden curl back out of her eyes. "Mr. Graves."

She was taller than he expected. After so many comparisons to Tina—mostly made by Queenie herself—he'd come to expect someone similar to Tina, but also lesser. Dark-haired, then, but mousy. Perhaps frumpier to match her drab duties. A young witch who lived in her sister's shadow both figuratively and literally, and had reason to be used to it.

Despite adjusting for Abernathy's reaction, he'd still been far off the mark. She wasn't even a brunette. In fact, the apron was the only thing that fit the mental image he'd so foolishly conjured up, and that barely. If there was a single smudge of dirt on the navy blue fabric he couldn't detect it. The embroidered flowers over the pockets, one of which unobtrusively held her wand, matched the red polka dots sprinkled over her smart cornflower blue dress.

"Miss Goldstein." His unapologetically curt tone, brought on by rising irritation with her blatant unease, would've earned a hard look from his mother. Perversely enough, her landlady seemed to approve. "I must speak with you privately regarding an issue at the office."

Growing impossibly paler, she nodded jerkily as she stepped down to the floor. "Y-yeah, alright. _Is_ it alright, Mrs. E?"

The landlady considered him head to toe, lingering obviously on his clothes rather than his face, before she turned away, letting the door she'd been holding open fall against his shoulder. "Fine, seeing as how he looks like the respectable type and this is a respectable place. Don't give him any ideas to the contrary, girl," she tossed over her shoulder as she scuttled back down the narrow hall to her ground-floor apartment.

If Goldstein resented the remark, she gave no sign of it. Rather, as soon as her landlady's door snapped shut, she leaned forward to whisper anxiously, "Is this about Tina? Nothing's happened to her, has it?"

"No. So far as I know, she's fine," he said, bristling when she grasped the sleeve of his coat like a lifeline. "Granted she's no safer than any other auror in the field, but unharmed." What stopped him from shaking her off was how green her eyes appeared in her anxious face; he found himself frozen as one caught in a basilisk's stare.

"Honest? No foolin'?"

He gave a slow nod while another quieter part of himself wondered, _Is this how she does it? Does she lure people close, like a siren, and coax their secrets free?_ Standing in the stuffy front hall of her building, allowing her to touch him so casually—his suspicions took on a new intensity as he unthinkingly braced himself for invasion.

Yet whatever twinge of magical pain he feared never came.

She let out a sigh and released her grip on his sleeve right when he made to pull away. "Sorry, it's just... I got used to seein' her around the office every day, and now _you_ turn up, and..." She flapped a hand before cupping her cheek and turning aside. "I'm being silly," she said with a wry laugh.

The relief she felt wasn't shared; embarrassment flooded him. What had he thought would happen when she grabbed at him, some sort of psychic assault? Travers was right—she wasn't a sorceress, or Grindelwald in disguise. She was, in all likelihood, a successful busybody. Of course there'd be no sudden pressure of another's mind seeking unwanted entry into his own, no shredding burn of someone rifling through his thoughts.

Had he really expected it?

"C'mon," she said, starting back up the stairs and tossing him a coy smile over her shoulder, oblivious to the muddle he'd found himself in. "You can tell me what brings an important guy like yourself all the way uptown just to see little old me."

 

 

Graves hadn't been unemployed since the day he graduated from Ilvermorny, so he could only imagine what the jobless got up to in their copious amounts of spare time. After hearing how she'd typically spent her days, he'd pictured her idle in her shared apartment. Perhaps lounging about in pajamas, eating cake for a very late breakfast and flipping through magazines before casting them aside in favor of a nap. He hadn't anticipated interrupting what looked to be a serious cleaning.

The apartment she rented with Tina was positively stuffed to the rafters with... _things_. The expected magazines were actually fighting over what order they should stack themselves on the shelf, but there were also books and potion supplies, lamps of differing heights and a small general-purpose cauldron, cooking utensils of all sorts, dishes, framed pictures, a wireless. Most of it— bickering magazines excluded—appeared to be clustered in the middle of the room, trapped in a slow-moving orbit around the twin stars of low couch and dining room table. Squashy cushions floated through the air like fat moons, and the lot was attended to by a couple of harried rags while a broom and mop performed a complicated waltz around the room.

"Sorry about the mess," she said, blushing prettily when he hesitated by the door while stripping off his gloves, eyes widening at the cramped quarters. Of course the place would be smaller than his own Upper East Side apartment, that only made sense, but that didn't stop the usual prickle of sweat that gathered at his temples at the sight of so little space to maneuver around in.

Two adults lived here? How could they stand it? They'd be practically in each other's pockets, no privacy at all. His eyes moved from one thin wall to another, certain they were inching closer together, until he felt it.

There: a window, open, and a wayward feather duster blew towards him that he had to duck to avoid. The breeze was more summer than winter, likely thanks to some earlier charm to keep the place from freezing as she aired it out, but it still cooled the sudden sweat on his face.

Attention locked on that breeze, that escape out of these tight quarters into the wider city beyond, Graves barely noticed as Goldstein took his coat and scarf to hang up, then waved her wand to clear an unobstructed path for him to the couch. "I ain't used to having so much free time and I kinda got carried away trying to get it done before the new year. You want something to drink? Coffee? Tea? It ain't the season for it, but I could mix up some lemonade, there's strawberries and I just love-"

"Lemonade's fine." More coffee would likely kill him but if he didn't pick something he sensed she'd only keep going. There was something of the determined hostess about her that he recognized from many an agonizing society luncheon.

When at last they were both seated—he on the wicker couch that was bizarrely more comfortable than his own bed, she on a springy chair, both with tall glasses of unseasonable strawberry lemonade and a plate of cookies on the table between them—she crossed her trim ankles and smiled benignly at him. Her wand, he noted, was safely back in her apron pocket.

He did not smile back as he waited for hers to fade or her gaze to drift. Few people smiled at him for very long, and fewer still maintained eye contact. Most were like Abernathy, discomforted yet incapable of resisting the desire to look, their eyes drawn continuously as if charmed to the scars. The rest, like Travers, took great pains to avoid looking at his face entirely; they always looked at his hands instead.

Queenie Goldstein sat across from him, smile as constant in its strength as _lumos_ , and he realized after a lengthy silence that she wasn't going to break first.

It unnerved him.

"You're aware of Grindelwald's extradition back to Europe, correct?" he asked at last, as close to polite small talk as he was willing to waste time with.

"Good riddance," she said with surprising vehemence before she continued in a happier tone, "It was all over the papers for weeks, so yeah, I read a thing or two about it."

"Auror Allegan already spoke with you about your part in the case, but I wanted to go over a thing or two with you." His cheek twitched in an abortive attempt at a nonthreatening smile. "Loose ends. You understand."

The first hint of her reluctance was a careful sip of lemonade. He shouldn't have tried to smile. "I dunno how I could help any more than I already have, but sure."

Setting his own untouched glass down on the table between them, he leaned forward slightly and clasped his hands, ignoring the framed photographs that were floating behind her head, a black-and-white Tina Goldstein self-consciously straightening up when she spotted him. "Where were you when you heard your sister was going to be executed?"

Goldstein winced, but that was only to be expected. "Delivering coffee to a staff meeting."

"Which one?"

"Housing and Development," she said, nudging a floating book away. _Protection-Charm Your Mind_ —a typical text for aurors looking to move up at MACUSA. "I thought you said this wasn't about Tina?"

"It isn't. How did you find out?"

She blinked. "Find out what?"

It was a close call, but he kept both sarcasm and impatience out of his voice as he restated the question. "How did you find out she was going to be executed?"

"Oh." The way she chewed the inside of her cheek was interesting, but not as much as her apologetic shrug. "I guess I overheard somethin'. People talk-"

"Around you, yes. I've heard. Who was at the meeting?"

This time she didn't try to deflect, but instead rattled off a half-dozen familiar names. "It must've been one of them I heard it from," she said with another easy smile.

A reasonable enough conclusion except for how no one in the H&D department would have the clearance for the kind of information she claimed to have stumbled across.

When he said as much to her, her response was as simple as it had been in her interview: "Maybe they heard it from someone else. You know how people love to gab." The smile she'd been giving him all along grew and was, as her shrug had been, tinted with apology.

He was halfway to agreeing when something occurred to him as the twitch of rags polishing silver caught his eye and fueled his unease. Too many things moving about, too many distractions obscuring something frightfully obvious: what she said was ridiculous, and yet he'd been ready to accept it.

Something like a cool wind against the back of his unprotected neck made him shiver, so different from the gentle breeze that stirred the curtains.

Picking up his glass, he slouched back on the couch with a mock casualness, a frown briefly crossing his face as he kept his gaze locked on the middle distance, not flicking here and there to track the feather duster still moving about with a snitch-like erraticism. "You're right, of course. Anyone would think there was nothing more important to do than gossip."

Predictably she agreed, though her smile dimmed as she reached for a cookie. "People can be awful when they think no one's listening," she said before reconsidering, setting it down and turning her attention back to her lemonade instead. Fidgeting. It was tempting to focus on how her slim fingers wrapped around the glass or on the faint quaver of emotion in her voice. Sincere, possibly, but distracting.

Allegan had been distracted. Not by Newt Scamander, with his endless supply of pointless anecdotes, but by Queenie Goldstein, who had been downright terse in comparison.

 _I will succeed where she failed,_ he reminded himself, and steadied his mind as he'd been trained. As Tina's instruction manual would suggest.

"But that's all you do, isn't it?" he said, prodding her. "Listen, not spread it yourself?"

Her eyes flicked up to his. "One of those things I can't help, one I can." No trace of sympathy there, only a firm resolve that matched his own.

 _Admirable_ , he thought, and found that he believed her. He would've believed her even without her willing him to. But now that he'd collected himself properly, as every auror ought to when on the clock, he could feel it: a ghostly pressure of fingertips against his cheek as if bidding him look away.

Gentleness was often an illusion; it was all he could do not to tense in expectation of the hand that would undoubtedly grab tight and shake and _crush_ when it didn't get what it wanted.

The glass was there in his hand: it was either hurl it the too-small distance to shatter against a wall and hear something other than the roar of blood in his head or use it as intended.

Unbidden, the image of his mother's pinched face rose in his mind. _This is your fault. Surely after two years of school you ought to know the repairing spell?_ His sip turned to a gulp.

"Good, huh?" The phantom insistence vanished as her smile widened. Every witch had a source of pride.

"Given what I've heard about you, I expected nothing less," he said, licking his lips and forcing his mind to relax, to let his thoughts be nudged away from his purpose for visiting her to other questions. Unimportant things he did his best not to ponder, such as: when last had anyone made anything for him? For him specifically, and not merely because he was a customer? It was galling to consider.

"Oh, honey." That brush of fingertips again. "How awful." There was a beat as they stared at each other across the table, both holding their glasses of lemonade like a couple of posed dolls before Goldstein set hers down with a crack against the tabletop to cross her arms. "Mr. Graves, that was a real mean trick."

Her wand was still in her pocket.

 

 

There were a number of obscure things Europeans devoted time to studying that Americans had been happy enough to let fall by the wayside. Ancient runes, for starters. Auguries. The mental arts.

The witch who had trained him in occlumency was European. Swedish extraction, if he recalled correctly, by way of Durmstrang. Grindelwald's old school, though anyone who'd been expelled couldn't be properly counted as an alumnus. That had happened late into his academic career, presumably after he'd already learned occlumency himself.

Huld had been a precise woman with endless reserves of patience in the makeshift classroom they'd assembled for her in MACUSA headquarters. Not that she had needed much beyond an empty space for a dozen or so high-ranking yet wary aurors to stand and wait their turn.

 _You may not have any warning in the real world, and so I will give you none,_ she had said before silently casting the legilimency spell, sending one or another of his colleagues to their knees as she rummaged carelessly through their mind. Just long enough to teach them how humiliating it was to be so known. How dangerous it could be.

How painful.

 _Imagine if I were your enemy, and you had something I truly wanted,_ she said one afternoon as he struggled to push her out of his head. _Clear your mind of anger, embarrassment, hate. Even the desire to keep me out must be set aside; strong emotions are the crack in the foundation that leads to collapse. You must push it all away until there is nothing. That is where the power of occlumency lies—absence. Absence of thought, emotion. If there are no words to read, there is nothing to rewrite. Do you understand?_

Sitting across from Queenie Goldstein, a touch of fear evident in her pretty face as the detritus of her life together with her sister spun around the room, Graves realized with a shocking pang that understanding only took him so far.

_If there must be words, let them be of your own careful selection, that whomever reads them learns only what you wish._

The lie of his neglect—and it was a lie, he was sure—was gone from his mind before Goldstein saw the pointlessness of glaring at him. He'd been getting all kinds of looks from people for months; she would have to try harder to sway him now that he had his feet planted, so to speak.

"You're a natural, then."

As if by habit, her annoyance evaporated like morning mist, replaced by a wide-eyed look and a tilt of her head. "A natural what?"

"Enough." A sharp jerk of his free hand stopped her possessions where they floated in mid-air, the mop and broom frozen like statues, and at last he could pretend to relax without so many distractions. For a serious moment he considered dropping the lot on the floor just to hear the tinkle of breaking glass and cracking porcelain, but as before he resisted.

Barely.

There was still time to get the real satisfaction he was after, he didn't have to live down to his family's bad habits.

That didn't stop him from grinding his teeth before speaking. "You don't need to cast the spell, correct? Even nonverbally." Casting _legilimens_ silently wasn't unheard of, but doing so without the use of a wand was, at least to his extensive knowledge. It wasn't the levitation charm, after all; even Huld had believed it too delicate a magic to control without the additional focus a wand provided.

Goldstein's wand had not touched her hand since she'd made them both lemonade.

Her lips parted for a second, though whether it was to scold him for so rudely interfering in her charmwork or to deny his claim further he couldn't say. _A legili-what?_ He'd listened to her statement enough times to be able to imagine her tone of voice exactly. But the illusion she'd maintained for years of a diverting appearance and cheerful irrelevance had failed at last, and she knew it.

She hugged her crossed arms tighter against her chest, creasing the front of her apron. "Yeah, that's me," she said with a roll of her eyes. "I'm a natural."

"Your sister knows, of course. Who else?"

A shrug, full not of apology this time but of a simmering resentment. "Nobody." Then she looked sharply up at him, her curls bouncing slightly, framing her bloodless face. "You ain't gonna demote her again, are you? Or- It ain't her fault. I-I made her not report me, I used my-"

He raised one hand to shush her. "No one's going to be demoted, and I'm not here to arrest you."

"You're no citation-scribbler, and if you ain't gonna slap the cuffs on me then what?" There was an edge to her teasing, but the tiny wrinkle that appeared between her slim brows hinted at a leery curiosity. "If you're thinking of offering me a job as some kinda official MACUSA mind-reader, you can obliviate yourself."

A chill ran through Graves before he could stop it. But when she continued on to say she'd already heard the spiel and wasn't interested, _buster_ , he allowed himself to relax minutely. _If_ he were thinking about it. With his mind (temporarily) right and his shield in place, she couldn't see anything.

She was just out of work. Naturally her thoughts would turn to employment. And if her sister knew, she'd doubtless been the one to suggest it.

Tina wasn't the only person to think of such a thing.

"I'm not here in any official capacity," he admitted, ignoring how she twitched. "But yes. I'd like to make you an offer."

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Everyone in the world has a "what exactly did Grindelwald do to Graves???" story at this point, and I have read none of them. Likely because I've been working on mine for far longer than I want to admit. I figured I should probably start posting it before it grows any more mold, or before I get the itch to """"""rework"""""" this a ~~third~~ fourth time.
> 
> And if you're wondering, no, this isn't finished. Yet.
> 
> Feedback encouraged.


	2. Chapter 2

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I apologize in advance to any lawyers in the audience.

"You want me to what?"

"I want you to read my mind."

She'd learned early on in life how big a mistake it could be to laugh outright at a wizard, but what he said was so ridiculous she couldn't help it. At least she didn't do it for very long.

Percival Graves continued to stare at her as if _he_ were the legilimens, willing her to say yes. He might have better luck; she hadn't had any so far in pushing him away from his obvious determination to discover her secret, though God knew she'd tried. Except for that brief snippet of bone-deep loneliness she'd picked up when he sampled the lemonade, she'd gotten little emotional feedback from him since he'd sat down. Nothing she couldn't see with her own two eyes, anyway.

And what she saw was not reassuring.

It wasn't the scars that bothered her, though her heart twinged at the sight of how they cut across his face. One ran shallow from the right corner of his mouth to nick sharply down the side of his chin; the other began as a deep divot that carved from the middle of his upper lip up over his left cheekbone, ending close to the corner of his eye and narrowly missing his nose in the process. Both were a vivid red, as though they were days and not nearly a month old.

No, it wasn't his _appearance_. It was the way he held himself, even seated in her living room. There was a stray dog's hunger in his manner, his fragile patience, his clenching fists. Knowing he'd looked worse, been more desperate, did nothing for the anxiety that gnawed away at her.

Not for the first time, she'd woken that morning to the sound of screaming. At least Tina had been away at work already and not around to worry in her own frustrated fashion, aware as Queenie was that there was nothing to be done about it. It hadn't been either of them doing the screaming, after all—it hadn't even been a nightmare, something she could blame her irrational mind for conjuring up.

"Well?" His voice wasn't hoarse when he prodded her; she'd half-expected it to be, given how the memory of his frantic shouting echoed so loudly in her mind.

She shivered, hugging her arms closer over her chest. The instinct to say no and toss him out on his ear was strong, but not stronger than her guilt, and certainly not her curiosity. Never stronger than that. "Ignoring for a sec that it ain't as easy as you suggest, aren't you afraid I'll hear somethin' I shouldn't if I go poking around in there?"

"Nothing I've learned about you leads me to believe you're indiscreet."

It was too late to claim the opposite, and he'd never believe her if she tried. "How do you know I could if I wanted to?" It wasn't just his occlumency that had thrown her off-kilter, or the borrowed memories that continued to rattle around upstairs, like rats in an attic—it was what she'd seen at the front door. Or, more accurately, what she hadn't seen.

In those brief moments when he'd first arrived, when she'd leapt to the worst conclusion she could think of—that the head of the aurors had come to personally deliver the news that something awful had happened to Tina—she'd gotten as clear a read on Graves as she ever had on any stranger.

And she had heard precious little. Enough to convince her that he'd been telling the truth about Tina's well-being, but beyond that it had been... She hadn't heard enough to say with any certainty _what_ it was. Only that it wasn't static, the buzz of white noise that she'd swiftly learned signaled his occlumency, but something far more impenetrable. His mind was like a played-out record, skipping before someone turned it over. A muted sense of something she couldn't quite reach.

Something that was nothing at all like Grindelwald.

 _Miss... Goldstein, is it?_ The corners of his lips had curled upwards as he looked past Allegan to where she stood on the other side of the one-way glass. _Your resemblance to your sister is tolerably weak._

 _Too bad for you your resemblance to Mr. Graves is nonexistent,_ she'd replied sweetly before focusing her attention on what she'd been brought downstairs to do. But while her smile shrank, his had only widened as she could make out... nothing.

There was her sister next to her, broadcasting her worry loud and clear, nearly eclipsing President Picquery's fizzy occlumency shield; the skeleton crew of aurors all around her, the lot of them vibrating on the same frequency of high alert.

Given what she could sense from him, Grindelwald may as well have been as alive as the chair he was sitting on.

 _You're nothing at all like her,_ he thought, mismatched eyes narrowing. _How interesting._

Graves's sigh jolted her back to the present. "Besides the fact you already have repeatedly-"

"You might as well have spoon-fed me those thoughts!"

"-there's what you did in the interview. You used legilimency to convince Allegan not to question you further, did you not?"

She shrugged, uncomfortable at the reminder of past manipulation. "She was tired, and I didn't know nothing important anyhow. It's not like I warped her mind or anything, just... gave her a nudge. Away."

"Which you've been trying to do to me since I sat down." The respect in his eyes, if not his tone, surprised her. "You have a particular way of leaning on someone," he explained before his gaze cut away from her face to his lemonade. "Gentle. It's unusual."

Tina had complained endlessly when Queenie's ability had first manifest that she'd been too loud. _Quit stomping around in there,_ she'd say with a harsh look that would soften as soon as Queenie apologized. She apologized so much it became second nature, but it hadn't been so easy to lighten her touch. It shouldn't have been so satisfying to hear Graves compliment her skill, but it was.

 _Not like I ever hear it from anyone else._ She snatched up a cookie and took a large bite out of it to avoid saying anything else that might get her into more trouble.

"Tina told you what was going to happen, didn't she?" His low tone wasn't enough to make her look back at him from where she stared unhappily at the rags frozen in mid-air against the silverware they'd been polishing. "She told you that I-" an audible click of his throat, then he carried on, rougher than before "-that Grindelwald had ordered her execution. Didn't she?"

"Yeah." Tina had screeched into her ear like she'd been standing right next to her. Not begging her to help, but telling her to leave. _Queenie, Queenie, you've gotta get out of here._ The worst thing she'd ever heard.

"Given the distance-"

"She's my sister," she said thickly. Covered her mouth with the hand holding the last bit of cookie until she could swallow and repeat herself. "I can always hear her, even across town. That don't mean I can hear everybody-"

"You wouldn't try if I paid you?"

At first she didn't realize it was a question, he asked her so flatly. So devoid of any emotion at all besides weariness.

And he _was_ tired. It wasn't whatever spell Grindelwald had worked that had left him thin, almost gaunt. Or at least that wasn't the only source of the numerous white streaks in his dark hair, the tremble in his hand.

His flimsy patience, the desperate desire to ferret out her secret. And now the suggestion that he would pay her to sift through his mind? She'd been hurling excuses at him for why she couldn't or shouldn't do it, when what she ought to have been asking him was why he wanted her to in the first place.

So she did.

His jaw tightened before he answered her, the scar in his cheek shifting oddly. Ignored her. "I'll pay you five hundred dragots if you agree to-"

"I ain't agreeing to nothin' until you tell me why."

If she hadn't been what he suspected her of being then maybe she would've been surprised by his reaction. She might've startled like a cat whose tail was trod on, shrieked like a No-Maj as everything that had been floating around the room crashed onto the floor. Records cracked; dishes shattered; the mop and broom toppled like lifeless puppets to clatter and roll over the floorboards.

But she wasn't a No-Maj, and she wasn't caught unaware. Not again. Moments before the levitation charm was interrupted, the relentless static of his shield resolved itself into something far simpler—misery. It sounded like mothballs crunching underfoot, fur brushing against his elbows as he raised his arms again to pound against the inside of the-

"That wasn't very polite," she scolded him, refusing to be distracted by the bright snap of fear from the memory that had made it through the haze—real, this time, she'd bet on it—nor embarrassed by her downstairs neighbor banging on the ceiling. It wasn't her who threw a hissy fit, and she wouldn't be cowed by it either. She'd seen worse.

That clench of his jaw again as Graves bowed his head like a child before he raised his hand and she felt the cooling sweep of a repairing spell wash over the room, fixing everything he'd just broken in a fit of pique. "One thousand dragots," he said instead of apologizing, "or I'll report you for practicing a restricted magic without a permit. Given the severity of the infraction and the security risk you pose to MACUSA, I doubt they'd stop at a fine.

"There's also the question of the deal you made with the government. Didn't it hinge on _honesty_?"

Gooseflesh broke out over her body so quickly she couldn't be sure of the cause—the money or the threat—and she instinctively reached out to his mind. Just to check if he was bluffing, but instead she ran straight into that shield of his.

And he knew it—she saw it in his face when he lifted his head. Not smug, the way Grindelwald had been. Resigned, if she had to guess. "I said I wasn't here to arrest you, but if you force me to I will."

"Blackmail ain't exactly legal either, Mr. Graves." The words came out faint at first, barely above a whisper. A _thousand_ \- Prison? She felt thin as tissue paper at the thought; he could probably make out the back of the chair she sat upon. Pictured herself denser, thick as bricks, and continued in a stronger voice, "Ain't you supposed to be head of the aurors or somethin'? You oughta know better than that."

The noise he made could only be called a laugh if one had a very loose definition of the word, and were inclined to include dismay in the description. "You're right, I should." He lifted his glass of lemonade and, after tipping his head to her, drained it in one long swallow. It barely clicked against the tabletop when he set it down. "Two thousand."

 _Two thousand dragots._ She knew he was good for it; the Graveses were old money, part of the Original Twelve. With that kind of cash, she wouldn't have to worry about getting a job anytime soon; they could even see about moving into a bigger apartment. Or she could get a place of her own-

"Please."

Not in an attempt to intimidate, as before, or lure her in with the intent to trick her. No, there was a naked honesty in his brown eyes that she felt in her bones was sincere. At least as sincere as the dark circles he was sporting, the product of plain old exhaustion, and that as much as what he said next convinced her.

"Please, Miss Goldstein," he said again. _You wouldn't try if-_ Expecting her to say no, say no _again_ the way he'd heard so clearly the first two times, but incapable of giving up.

_What was the alternative?_

"Only 'cause you asked so nice," she said with a smart-alecky smile, feeling some satisfaction when he finally looked away, throat working.

 

 

The last afternoon of the year was a blustery one, full of wind that tried to catch her hat the moment she apparated outside the fine-looking row house. She didn't often trek over to Murray Hill, but a quick peek around left her feeling the same vague envy as always. The address he'd given her was a tidy street lined with brownstone buildings and the skeletons of trees that promised plenty of shade in the summer.

A small wrought iron sign secured to the front door assured her she had the right place: _Carraway & Associates_ it read in raised letters touched with gold leaf.

She was still thinking about that sign when she was seated inside on a comfortable wingback chair, watching as Prudence Carraway tapped her wand against a stack of papers, duplicating them with a flash of light as subtle as a sunbeam escaping from behind a cloud. The window behind her only revealed the building across the street, no sky at all.

"One for each of you, no need to share," she said, another flick of her wand directing each stack to hover before either Queenie or Graves, who was perched on the edge of his own chair. Though this had all been his idea, there was no visible enthusiasm for the prospect as he took the stack and held his hand out immediately for one of Carraway's fancy white ostrich quills.

Queenie, on the other hand, was not so quick to sign. _This Mutual Nondisclosure Agreement (the "Agreement"), dated as of-_ "Why couldn't we just shake on it?" she asked as she continued to read. "Or we could've sworn vows, keep you getting bent out of shape."

In her periphery, Graves shook his head as a page turned and he scribbled his name on another dotted line before getting to his feet and passing the lot back to Carraway. "I've seen too many vows go bad because of ambiguity or misinterpretation. This is clearer."

"'Clearer' ain't the word I'd use for this," she muttered, finger tracing beneath line after line in the two-foot-long paragraph of text that made up the definition section. _'Proprietary Information' means knowledge previously, presently, or subsequently disclosed by or for Discloser to Recipient-_ "'Previously'?" She looked from Graves, hovering by the end of the desk, to Carraway, who sat statue-like but for her eyes, which shifted continuously from witch to wizard and back. "So that covers- you know-"

"Your ability? Oh yes, entirely." A twitch of Carraway's wand was the source of the bright green comet that streaked beneath another chunk of text further down the page. "You'll see here, under the restrictions, that the agreement also covers my knowledge as Mr. Graves's agent in this matter."

The line faded away as Queenie nodded, reading carefully and ignoring Graves as he moved from the desk to the crammed bookshelves and back in some frustrated attempt at pacing in the small office. "No gossiping with the girls in the knitting circle for you, I guess."

Carraway tittered nervously as Graves sidled silently behind her to better look out the window. "No, certainly not. Do you need an explanation of any other terms? I know this sort of talk can be rather tough for some to understand-"

"No, thanks." Queenie spared her a polite smile. "It ain't any worse than what I used to handle. That was some deadly dry stuff."

"In the Permit Office?" Graves turned from glowering down at the street. "I was told you only processed applications."

"I can guess who told you that," she said with a roll of her eyes. Trust Joe not to be entirely honest about who did what. "Yeah, I did a bit more than file and clean."

"Such as?"

Writing Abernathy's departmental memos and biweekly reports, for starters. _I'll get right on it, Queenie. You have no idea how many important things I gotta keep track of!_ Joe wished. He thought he was getting a big promotion when he was made head of the WPO; she knew better. She'd been there longer than he had—more than long enough to realize a dead-end position when she saw one. That was partly why writing the reports for him hadn't concerned her—it wasn't like anybody was going to read them.

Just like nobody was supposed to notice _her_.

Not that any of that was Graves's business, even taking into account this fancy contract his lawyer had conjured up. Eyebrows arched, she said, "Now, Mr. Graves, you know a good witch don't kiss and tell."

When he turned wordlessly back to the window, she carried on with her reading. The deeper in she got the more she found to appreciate. Carraway had seemingly thought of everything: how anything they learned about each other could be used (only in the context of the transaction), to whom it could be disclosed (nobody besides each other or designated agents). It was exhaustive, and all the more impressive for how last-minute it was.

So of course she hit another bump in the road when the page turned and she reached the section on compelled disclosures. _Recipient will promptly notify Discloser upon learning of any such legal requirement to divulge Proprietary Information, and cooperate with Discloser in the exercise of his/her right to protect the confidentiality-_

"You realize if you sign this you can't go through with that threat you made before, don't you?" She cut a glance at him through her eyelashes, curious what his reaction would be, if he'd need reminding.

As usual it was nonexistent, and he did not. "Yes."

"So long as I don't go back to working for MACUSA, anyhow."

That caught his attention—he turned once more from the window, hands clasped tightly behind his back, to meet Queenie's placid expression with bewilderment.

"You'd have to tattle if I did," she explained, pointing to a spot in the section that outlined legal requirements. "Like you said, I'd be a security risk, but if I don't, you can't."

He craned his neck to look past Carraway to where she'd been pointing. "As you say." There was an odd cant to his voice, to the quirk of his eyebrows as he considered her, visibly weighing a question.

Carraway beat him to it. "I don't mean to be rude." Leaning forward slightly with pronounced interest in her large eyes, she clasped her hands atop Graves's copy of the agreement. "But your ability- You're a legilimens? Does that mean you can read anyone's mind?"

Queenie knew what was coming, but it was still an effort to be nice rather than exasperated. "Not 'read' exactly, but yeah, almost." _Almost_. She resisted the initial urge to look at Graves, and shoved Grindelwald's face from her mind just as definitively.

"Can you read mine?" Carraway beamed with an eagerness Queenie had seldom seen directed at her for this specific reason. "I don't mean will you, or are you, but- Oh, I don't know what I mean exactly."

"You wanna know what your house looks like to someone just visiting?"

Her laugh was loud with a slight honk, and Queenie decided she liked her better for it. "Yes, I suppose."

Out of respect for her profession, Queenie had been attempting to keep her nose out of Carraway's business. It had been simple enough—the witch was thankfully not the sort to shout in her own mind. But, vacant eyes on the large desk, she discovered there was more than a natural quietude to Carraway's thoughts.

"You're neat as a pin. Everything packed up in boxes like you're getting ready to move. The glasses and plates all wrapped in newspaper so they don't rattle," she said dreamily, the delicate tinkle of the witch's mind like wind chimes on a distant porch. "I can barely hear a thing. Wouldn't know where to start, to be honest."

"I'll take that as a compliment," Carraway said, relaxing in her leather wingback with a slight wiggle.

"You should." Graves beat her to it. But then he'd already received her attention, and knew what to expect; he had turned back to the window, uninterested.

She smiled warmly at Carraway before the page flipped over so she could read through the sections on termination and remedies. One hundred years of confidentiality on both their parts sounded optimistic. There was an unpleasant twist in her gut as she recalled how her parents hadn't made it out of their forties; neither had she heard of any Graves surviving past sixty. As powerful a family as the Goldsteins were not, the Graveses never seemed to live long enough to really enjoy it.

_Due to the unique nature of the Proprietary Information, the parties agree that any actual or threatened breach of this Agreement would cause not only financial harm to Discloser, but also irreparable harm for which monetary damages will not be adequate remedy._

"There's the vow I've been looking for," she murmured, reading and rereading.

"It's better," Carraway said.

The lid on one of her many boxes shifted. Queenie heard a brush of feathers, the snowfall-silent dive of the patient owl who at last has caught the darting field mouse, and she quickly shied away from the sound of sharp talons closing around soft unsuspecting flesh.

There was no talk of dry civil rules in this lengthy paragraph, no threats of an injunction or other legal action. Instead there were curses, lasting pain, and infamy as an oath-breaker. Old magic promising the sort of humiliation that could ruin any witch or wizard's life. Further still, it could ruin their family, even one as upper-crust as Graves's.

Far more effective than the Unbreakable Vow's quick death.

"Are you still willing?"

She could feel his eyes intent upon her, and when she looked up it was to the sight of him before the window, the thin December sunlight fighting its way through the clouds and the glass panes to limn the streaks of gray in his hair; the angle he stood at hid the worst marks upon his face but did nothing to lessen his natural severity.

"I get why you didn't want to do it the usual way," she said, "but isn't this how the No-Maj do it? Get everything down in black and white? It's so fussy. So much red tape."

"It's not... traditional," he allowed, crossing his arms over his chest. "But what point is there to having laws if we don't use them to protect ourselves?"

 _From each other._ Reluctance bit at her with teeth sharpened by the memory of the last time she agreed to put her legilimency to use. _Good_ use, too, and though the quills beckoned, she spared Graves a second look instead.

His fingers dug into the sleeve where he gripped his arm, a match for the twitching muscle in his jaw, the rigid way he held himself in check. Unlike before he did nothing to force her to a decision; instead he waited, nearly trembling with it, and after enduring a long moment of her silence she thought a sort of hopelessness came to lend a shine to his tired eyes.

"This protects us both, Miss Goldstein," he said softly, and that acknowledgement—of his advantage over her in status, wealth, sheer power—was enough to set her fingers flicking to summon one of Carraway's fluffy quills. Or so she would tell herself, pretending it hadn't been his despair, which she'd taken as dourness; the chance she could relieve it that had pushed her onward.

No need to ask where to sign—there were curling red arrows that flashed like the bright lights in Times Square, pointing again and again at dotted lines on every page, after every section. Enough space for her name in its embarrassing entirety; it felt surreal, writing it out again and again above the elegant twists of Graves's name, which had appeared on her copy the instant he'd set it down. Had she used it when she first started working at MACUSA?

Evidently not, given how Graves's thick eyebrows rose when he read over Carraway's shoulder. "That wasn't in your employee record. You don't go by-"

"No," she snapped before he could say her dreadful given name out loud. Tina had gotten off light. Wincing, she wrote it out a ninth and final time before letting the quill float back, light as a dandelion seed, to its inkwell home on the desk. "No, I don't. And you can't tell anyone about it, can you?" A grin slid across her face. "You're right, this whole finicky contract business _was_ a good idea."

"So glad to hear you agree." Spared one last look out the window before he emerged from behind Carraway to approach Queenie, extending his hand towards her. His skin was warm but not clammy as they shook; his desperation had vanished the moment she set pen nib to paper. He didn't gasp as she did when the contract's magic settled upon them with the sudden stab of a sewing needle into an unsuspecting finger, and though his grip tightened momentarily, his occlumency shield never faltered. Quite the opposite: it buzzed louder than ever somewhere between her ears.

 

 

In hindsight, it seemed obvious that Graves had known things wouldn't be as simple as her flipping through his thoughts the way she would an old copy of _Witch Chat_. The agreement with its inexact dates in a sea of precise definitions; his sometimes violent reluctance to explain. Even now, his insistence on taking her across town to his bank was a clue. Of course apparating meant it took no time at all to make the trip, but as she pulled her arm away from where she'd hooked it through his for side-along apparition and reoriented herself, she wondered how someone so determined could also be so tentative.

It all tied back to _why_ , but she knew better than to push again on that front. Better to be patient. She was bound to find out eventually; at least she'd be getting paid for her trouble.

Speaking of which...

"Islay & Ivy?" It was an old bank, maybe the oldest wizarding bank in America, but while the stone building on Broadway was modestly-sized there was nothing demure about its decorations. Gargoyles crawled across the roof, leering unseen at oblivious No-Maj, while the rest of the statues —classical warriors with swords and spears, goddesses with all-seeing eyes—stood guard.

"What about it?" He led the way across the street with barely a glance for passing traffic; the heavy door, worked in shining gold and silver, opened of its own accord when they reached it.

"Ain't they British? I thought you'd be with someone more American," she said in an undertone, feeling as though the goblins that manned the desks could make out her every word and disapproved. Of course goblins always looked like they disapproved of everything, so how was she to know?

"My family's had accounts with them for over five hundred years." Ignoring the line inside, he headed straight for a desk off to the side of the large hall, not waiting for Queenie, who lolly-gagged a step or two inside.

A sparkling black-and-white tile floor; golden grates across the tellers' counter; velvet ropes to mark the line; the air thick with the scents of cinnamon and iron, characteristic of a goblin-run establishment. But it wasn't any of those things, so different from the small credit union she and her sister used, that stopped her in her tracks.

Nor was it the customers, all very well-to-do witches and wizards whose streams of thought sparkled with financial security and end-of-year excitement. Not a shrill voice among them worrying about grocery money or rent; the endless lists of brands and exotic locales reminded her of the advertising jingles that had played all December over the wireless. _Come to sunny Aruba! Trust Darmody's for the finest furs! Ghiabi dragon scale bags, only the shiniest for the discerning witch!_

No, it was what ran behind it all like background noise in a studio picked up by a too-sensitive amplifying charm. A burble of thoughts that were only tantalizing because she could _nearly_ hear them.

"Miss Goldstein?"

To her left, a bit louder than a whisper, and if she stretched her ears she could almost-

"Miss Goldstein." Graves was standing before her; he dropped his hand at once from where he'd clasped her arm. People were giving her looks as they went around them, muttering about her being in the way, and it was effortless habit to ignore them.

"I always think I'll be able to make 'em out, but I never manage," she said quietly, and jerked her chin to a goblin sitting on his high stool, supervising the human tellers through a pair of spectacles. "I get close sometimes, but they can always tell and they get all tricky."

"You shouldn't try at all," he said, leading her over to the desk, elaborating at her curious look, "It's not like it's... Well."

"Were you going to say it ain't polite? Or that they ain't human?" Laughing at the way he clenched his jaw, she looked back to the goblin on his stool. "I kinda think they know that, Mr. Graves."

Even from a distance it was obvious how many more teeth the goblin had than a human, especially when it grinned so widely at her small wave and gave her one back. _No more intruding into other people's heads_ , she thought to herself in a voice stern as Tina's on a bad day. Maybe this time the chiding would work.

While she'd been off in her own little world, Graves had been speaking with the young witch at the desk, who was joined in a twist of apparition by a much older wizard in a dark gray suit.

"Mr. Graves," the man said, rounding the desk, rolling his wand between his fingers. "What can I do for you and Miss...?"

Before she could introduce herself, Graves cut in. Literally—wand out though not raised, he stepped in front of her so that the man was forced to stumble back, hip knocking against the desk. "We've talked about this before, Mr. Ashbourne."

The man, if possible, grew paler. "I- Yes, of course, my apologies," he stammered, swiftly pocketing his wand and laying his hands on both Graves's and Queenie's shoulders.

There was a blur of color, a spin, and the characteristic squeezing of side-along apparition as they popped into a well-appointed office.

"I'm gonna hurl," Queenie said, dropping her purse and blindly summoning the man's waste can to do just that. She was too busy to pay any attention to the whispered conversation the two men had, though it didn't take her very long to empty her stomach. When she looked up through bleary eyes, Ashbourne was gone and Graves was holding out a white handkerchief, his wand once more back in his pocket.

"Are you-"

"You scared that poor man half to death, pullin' your wand like that," she snapped, her tone at odds with the gentle way she took the kerchief to dab carefully at her sweaty forehead. "The minute he saw you it was like the sky had fallen and he could barely think straight. What the heck did you do to him? All he could think about was gettin' the ax or worse."

"You don't know?" Rather than be humbled by her sharp tone, he was incredulous. "Surely _he_ isn't an occlumens."

"Course not," she said, pulling out her wand to spell the poor man's waste can clean again. "I can hear him now, panicking over how he made me sick. Which he didn't, by the way." With a sniff, she handed back the handkerchief and summoned her purse, the strap sliding dutifully back up her arm and over her shoulder. "I haven't puked after apparating since I was still in pigtails. That was all your fault, putting him in such a tizzy. Now tell me what's up or I'm leaving."

"You said you can still hear him. Pull it from his mind," he said, tucking his kerchief away in his pocket.

"I've just about had enough of you, mister." The waste can clattered against the floor as she advanced on Graves, jabbing her finger into his chest hard so he could feel it through his endless layers of clothing, gripping her wand tightly by her hip. "If you want my help—and you're willing to pay for it so you obviously do—then you better start coughin' up some answers when I ask you questions. I signed your silly contract, didn't I? Stop being so damn secretive and tell me what's going on!"

Many would've blanched to see her practically yelling at a big shot like Graves, but, knowing her sister would've backed her up if she'd been there, Queenie couldn't find it in herself to feel remotely embarrassed. She'd had enough, and what sympathy had survived her impatience had been burned off by Mr. Ashbourne's volcanic dread.

The man's thoughts were like a cornered rat's, milling frantically round and round; she tuned them out, focusing instead on Graves, sure she'd run right into that wall of white noise as usual. To her surprise, it wasn't as relentless. It wavered like a weak radio signal, close to how it had when he'd snapped in her living room and smashed everything into the floor. This time there was no cause for alarm—unlike then, what she could make out wasn't fear, the fight response when flight was impossible, but something stranger. Something more like annoyance at a familiar tune playing next door; loud enough to hum along with the melody but too faint to make out the words, and she was so busy trying to figure out what the source of the music was that she nearly missed the guilty look that slunk across his face.

As before, he ducked his head, though this time there was a faint pink stain to his cheeks as he spoke. "The last time I was here was shortly after I returned to my duties at MACUSA. I learned that Grindelwald..." He gave a brief jerk of his head, as a horse would after being bitten by a fly, then continued, "Grindelwald had accessed my account and spent a portion of it."

"Oh." Unwittingly, she flattened her hand against the front of his wool coat. "When you say 'a portion,' you don't mean a couple of bucks, do you?"

A muscle rippled in his jaw. "It was ten times what I'm paying you, though a single dragot would've been too much," he added at her low whistle. "The bank agreed to certain precautions to prevent that from reoccurring, which Ashbourne is well aware of and did not act in accordance with."

"That don't mean you get to come on all heavy like you did," she said, giving him a slight push when his glower began to gain strength. "You can't blame Grindelwald if your reputation ends up trashed a second time, you know."

The startled look he gave her would've been a scant display of emotion for anyone else, but for him the furrowed brows and slightly parted lips spoke volumes though he didn't utter a word in response.

Satisfied, she dropped her hand and stepped back, tapping the tip of her wand thoughtfully against her palm. "What did he spend it on, anyway?"

He cleared his throat. "Suffice it to say I believe he had other cauldrons on the boil besides Credence Barebone. I won't say anything else for now. For _now_ ," he repeated before she could protest, one of his large gloved hands raised to bid her remain silent. "I promise I'll tell you more later. Happy?"

"No, but I'll live," she said with an enormous put-upon sigh before she plastered over her annoyance with a smile. Mr. Ashbourne was on his way back, and he could likely do with seeing at least one friendly face.

He re-entered his office, bearing a slim carved box in both hands as if it were his mother's prized icebox cake and he'd catch hell for dropping it. Not that Graves had ever given him reason to believe otherwise.

As much as she'd like to make sure he remained on his best behavior, the look of Ashbourne's pasty face as much as his emotional turmoil was giving her stomach a second serving of the loop-de-loops.

"Don't you worry about a thing, honey," she said, batting away his florid and frankly unnecessary apologies. "Just point me in the direction of the ladies' so I can powder my nose and we'll say nothin' else about it."

Ashbourne wasn't above giving her a pleading look as he did so. _Hurry back_ was wafting off him stronger than his mid-range cologne; it only intensified as he made to close the door after her and she heard Graves say, with enough bite in his tone to make her wonder if he'd listened to a single scolding word she'd said, "Leave it open."

 _Down the hall and two rights, can't miss it_. She focused on making it to the restroom instead of listening instinctively for any of the thoughts she knew would be bouncing off the walls of the countless offices she passed. Like a beehive—narrow corridors, honey-colored wood everywhere, and a busy little drone in every room. Worse than MACUSA, she thought, breathing a sigh of relief when at last she saw the door for the ladies' room and put it between herself and the rest of the noise.

Purely symbolic, of course, but she'd learned in school how much power the right symbol at the right time could have. She was grateful for this one as the lock turned and the shiny gold taps followed suit, water running freely into the sink. A flick of her wand turned one of the hand towels into a soft paper cup—not her best work, but it got the job done.

She should've told Tina when she had the chance, she thought, swishing the water back and forth in her mouth before spitting it out. Repeated the motion—gulp of water, swish, spit—as she wondered how many more times she'd have that specific regret. The idea that she _couldn't_ tell her sister something—not shouldn't, not wouldn't—was utterly foreign to her, and with an unhappy sigh she snapped her fingers at her handbag, too done in to bother rummaging through it for a travel toothbrush. Water alone wasn't cutting it.

Did the contract mean she couldn't tell Tina about how she'd puked in front of her boss? That certainly wasn't proprietary information, she thought with a grimace as she squeezed out a glop of dental cream onto the brush. But Tina would ask questions like where she'd been when this had happened, and what had made her ill, and why she'd been with Graves of all wizards, and when the last of the Goldstein family wound up hexed to hell and back then Queenie would really have some explaining to do.

Better not to bother. Just like she shouldn't have bothered with the dental cream, or at least transfigured it first so it wasn't so strongly cinnamon-flavored. Pervasive throughout the building, even in the small ladies' room despite its bouquet of flowers and the sachet of potpourri under the stack of towels, the smell only turned her stomach again before she could stick the brush in her mouth.

Rinsing it off and dropping it back where she'd got it, she took one of the E-Z-Fresh mints from the tin in her bag instead. No matter what Willoughby advertised over the wireless, they weren't as good as brushing, though the crisp taste did help with her lingering nausea. It took two to get her teeth feeling squeaky clean, and after touching up her makeup, shouldering her purse, and returning the cup to its original form, she left the restroom feeling more capable of dealing with whatever nonsense Graves dished out.

By the time she reached Ashbourne's office, her teeth had stopped squeaking, though the tingle lingered. Distracting enough that at first she didn't notice the anti-eavesdropping spell on the open doorway—the prickle of it was much like the aftertaste of the mints—until she walked into the room and the tail end of a conversation.

"-Thousand should be enough," Graves was saying, tucking something back into his shirt collar. His _open_ shirt collar, though not for long—a wave of his hand set the two or three buttons rushing back through the buttonholes of the shirt, concealing unmarked white skin. His necktie twisted this way and that like a confused snake before it constricted smoothly into a neat knot, the end sliding headfirst beneath his waistcoat as his tie pin resettled.

The way he quirked his eyebrows at her was practically a dare, but she knew better. Asking him had never gotten her a clear-cut answer, so she wouldn't bother this time. Skipping through Ashbourne's memory until she found the relevant snippets would be easier, but that was equally unappealing for its own reasons.

Not for the last time, she suspected, Queenie decided she just wasn't that curious. "All set?" she asked instead, hoping to get things moving. The sooner they got out of the bank, the sooner she could have a listen to Graves's mind the way he wanted, and the sooner she could untangle herself from yet another MACUSA-related mess.

Ashbourne, lovely man that he was when he wasn't turning her stomach, obliged. "I'll be right back with that withdrawal, sir," he said, and rushed off a second time, box cradled close to his chest like a quaffle in the semi-finals.

"Considering how much of a fuss you kicked up, I'm surprised that was so easy," Queenie said, tipping her head to Graves when a wave of his hand sent a chair gliding back from the desk for her to sit in while they waited.

"Why wouldn't it be?" He didn't take the other chair, but instead strode to the open door to gaze down the hall. Probably to see if Ashbourne had kicked up an acceptably-sized dust cloud in his haste to hop-to.

"I dunno, something always seems to come up whenever I have to do anything at the bank," she said, wondering if impatience was his natural setting or if he was still sore about earlier. "Even cashing a paycheck can be a bother. _You_ want two grand in cash-"

"Not cash. Bearer bonds." At her lasting silence, he elaborated, "They're similar to checks, but completely anonymous once in circulation. You can cash them at any magical financial institution no questions asked. Certainly not about who gave them to you in the first place."

She'd thought the contract was the upper limit of his paranoia; now she was forced to admit she'd been wrong. "So you ask for two grand in bearer bonds on the last day of the year, and Ashbourne doesn't bat an eye?"

"He's not paid to ask questions," he said offhandedly, twisting to look down towards the other end of the hall. "He's paid to do as he's told."

"And you wonder why his first instinct ain't to grill you to check you ain't an impostor."

Graves's attention snapped from the hall to her in an instant.

"Just an observation," she said lightly, innocent as a child in church before she remembered yet again that she would soon be carrying around the equivalent of two thousand untraceable dragots in her purse. "Did you want to get this over with then?"

"What?"

"The entire reason we came here. You paying me to do you-know-what for... only you know why."

"It's too late," he said promptly. "Tomorrow."

She scoffed. "Tomorrow? Are you kidding? It's new year's day tomorrow!"

At last he looked away, though she suspected he ground his teeth briefly before answering. "Sunday then. It's nearly six now; your sister will doubtless be home soon and wondering where you are."

"She's out workin' a case. Besides, this wouldn't be the first time she got home and I wasn't there," she said with a broad smile. "Trust me."

To her delight, his expression shifted from annoyance to disapproval. "Sunday. Unless you're religious...?"

She ignored that to say, "If I didn't know any better I'd say you were trying to put this whole thing off. What's the matter? Afraid you'll finally have to explain somethin' to me for a change instead of leaving me in the dark?"

The way he rolled his eyes so pointedly before sighing, mouth softening from its prior harsh line, made her think it was a good thing she hadn't suggested the other possibility that had occurred to her: that he was afraid of finally finding something out that _he_ didn't want to know.

 

 

Graves was right—Tina _was_ waiting for her back at their apartment.

"You're home," she called to her over the loud splashing of running water as she rinsed some carrots and potatoes. "I thought maybe you'd gone out to a party after all and I'd be eating all alone. Did your interview go okay?"

"What interview?" she asked, mind still back at the bank. The bearer bonds had been larger than she'd expected, almost the size of Tina's auror certificate, with so many fancy stamps and seals she barely got a look at them all before Graves had charmed the bonds smaller and slipped them into his wallet, tucked safe inside his coat pocket.

 _You'll be paid after the job is done, and not before,_ he'd said before giving her an address to meet him at in two days.

"For some filing job?" Tina prompted her as the vegetables set to chopping themselves up. "You said you had an interview. You never said where it _was_..."

"Oh, right." Unused to lying to her sister, she named the first place that sprang to mind. "Just a clerk-y thing for the Carraways. You know, the lawyers?" Nudging her sister out of the way, Queenie used the excuse of rescuing the roast beef to hide her guilty face. "I think it went okay. Oodles of paperwork."

"Then you weren't off seeing Jacob?" Hands up defensively, Tina attempted to mollify her by mixing up the gravy while she said, "I was just worried. You haven't been your usual chatty self, and I know you've been holding out hope-"

"You don't need to worry about me," she said quietly, waving her wand to charm away the burned bits on the roast. "I know a lost cause when I stand in front of one and ask him repeatedly if his cupcakes remind him of anything special. Or any _one_." Despite the deal she'd made with MACUSA, she hadn't been able to resist popping in once a week or so to see if Jacob had remembered anything. Nothing yet, but she couldn't call it a waste of time, not when she got to see his adorable face light up whenever they locked eyes.

How strange that this was the first she'd thought of him all day. She frowned heavily as the roast, finally presentable as well as edible, floated over to the table to join the side dishes.

Tina gave her shoulder a squeeze as she finished up the gravy. "I know, I'm-"

"Enough of that," Queenie said, interrupting her before she could apologize once again. Not quick enough to stop her thinking how sorry she was, how the law was the law, how Queenie should've known better than to get involved with a No-Maj, and after the day she'd had she was too tired to fight. "C'mon, tell me about your day. Were you still in Jersey?" Summoning a pair of napkins to join the plates and cutlery at the table, she continued in an undertone, "Is that guy still turning people into giant rats and... you know."

They both knew full well she was steering Tina to less troubled conversational waters, but thankfully her sister allowed herself to be led. "Yes to both questions, unfortunately," she said, and told her all about how her latest case was progressing. Some lunatic across the river had been engaging in increasingly unnatural work with vermin. It really shouldn't have been funny—very little about what aurors did was—but Tina had a way of relating a story that Queenie had always found delightful if, in this case, morbid as all get-out.

And, as ever, her sister's mind was a safe haven of common sense and caring. She might shrink from peering into other people's heads, but never Tina's, and though she'd been warned off a million times she gave a cursory listen to the day's collection of mental debris.

Her new partner was a transfer from Nevada who'd never seen snow before; she hadn't written Newt back yet, silly goose; there was some rumored shake-up in the DMLE, not that she'd been in the office lately to verify-

Her fork clattered against the plate. "What? Graves is out?"

Tina gave her a look of long-suffering disapproval, but it was more out of habit than any real annoyance because she promptly stopped describing the rat's nest they'd found. "Silence Goodspeed has taken over. I don't know how long for, but I wouldn't be surprised if it was for a while. Maybe permanently. There's supposed to be an announcement Monday." A complex swell of emotion followed after her words—relief at the stability Goodspeed promised, guilt at feeling so. And, beneath it all, regret for her now-former boss.

Queenie sipped her water, hoping to wash away the bitter taste of it. "Don't you know why?"

"It's not... on the record," Tina said, attention elsewhere as she moved her mashed potatoes around on her plate.

"Do you-" Queenie bit her lip, remembering his prickliness. "You think maybe he stepped down?"

Tina didn't need to answer. Not out loud, anyway—her mind had always come in clearer than any station on the wireless no matter how much occlumency training she undertook. And right now it was broadcasting every bit of gossip Tina had heard about Graves over the last month—how he avoided people and fell into brown studies constantly regardless of where he was; how his temper had worsened dramatically, as if he were giving his colleagues a reason to stay away. How poorly he looked.

How there might be some truth to the theory that Grindelwald had robbed him of something more than just his health and good standing. That that was why Graves was so obsessed with the case, why he spent hours going over related case files and records: he was trying to find-

Queenie dropped her head into her hand. The plate before her, smeared with gravy and orange flecks of carrot, had been one of the many things Graves had smashed into the floor in a burst of frustration. _His temper-_ "I shoulda known," she whispered, struggling to push back memories that weren't hers of Graves thrashing, cursing. He'd had that same wretched look in his eyes in Carraway's office as when Grindelwald-

When Grindelwald-

"There wasn't anything more you could've done," Tina said harshly and not for the first time. She reached across the table to twitch Queenie's sleeve. "You said it yourself—Grindelwald's a powerful occlumens."

_I'm not here in any official capacity._

_Are you here in an official capacity, Miss Goldstein?_ Grindelwald had asked. He raised his hands to press his palms against the tabletop, fingers spread wide over the metal surface, the clinking of his chains as clear as his voice in her head. _Or is this a social call? Do say it's the latter._

"Whatever's going on with Graves, none of it's your fault."

On the intake of a shuddering breath, Queenie wiped her hand over her damp cheek before giving Tina a watery smile that did nothing to reassure her. "I know," she said instead of telling her the truth and answering any of the cloud of concerned questions that buzzed about Tina's head, loud as a mosquito in her ear. But any notion of quieting that pest evaporated as a magical prickle ran over her body—the agreement was listening too. "You're right. Nothin' to do with me."

 

 

Snow was just beginning to fall when Queenie apparated to the edge of Central Park, and to her dismay it picked up rapidly as she hurried across Fifth Avenue. By the time she reached the address Graves had given her, the weather had overwhelmed the snow-be-gone charm on her coat and she was well-dusted.

"Here, miss," said the doorman standing under the canopy; to her surprise he produced a small brush instead of a wand, and swept the worst of it from her shoulders by hand before pulling the door open for her with a smile. "Happy new year."

"Thanks, honey." She didn't have any No-Maj cash on her, but she knew he didn't mind when she gave him a big smile instead of slipping him a tip.

She hadn't expected Graves to be living side-by-side with No-Maj New Yorkers, but then if he were to live anywhere in the city it would be unavoidable. Still, a doorman? And just a few feet away, another uniformed No-Maj sitting behind a desk festooned with a big silver bow? Not that either of them thought to stop her, thanks to her legilimency nudging them away from any suspicion, but there'd likely be an elevator attendant as well. Really, Graves could've warned her, she thought as she entered the car.

"Which floor, miss?" the man asked her, gloved hand hovering over a key inserted below a panel of buttons. One through thirteen, she saw, but when she asked for the top floor he didn't hesitate before hitting twelve.

"Only twelve floors?" she asked as the car glided smoothly upwards with a surprising speed. "Kinda short for such a fancy building."

The attendant's thoughts mirrored his sardonic tone as he said, "Fewer floors, fewer neighbors." With a soft chime, the doors slid open to reveal an empty lobby.

"Thanks a bunch," she said as she disembarked, concentrating on the man's mind. Any other witch might've hit him with a memory spell, but she'd long since lost her taste for those. Far better to use what natural ability she had—it was the work of an instant to find the location of the service elevator —and be on her way, leaving him with nothing more than a vague confusion. Had he dropped her on the tenth floor? The fourth? Surely it didn't matter; nobody would ask, and it was none of his business anyhow.

Feeling like a cat burglar in a drama, Queenie scurried around the corner of the pretty lobby and down the servants' hall to the service elevator. While there was no one about in the apartment, the No-Maj maids on their way up were coming in loud and clear. Further on to the stairs, then, which spiraled down again and again to her left. On her right there was a door with a very serious-looking sign, _No Access To Roof_ , that she ignored entirely. The magical barrier barely rippled as she walked through the illusion and hurried up the steep stairs, loosening the new scarf Tina had gotten her.

She was only a little out of breath when she finally reached Graves's floor, and when she pushed through the heavy door it was with trepidation.

Backing out hadn't seriously occurred to her since Graves asked her to help him, not even at Carraway's. Now that she was making her way down the quiet hall and past door after closed door, however, the familiar static of his occlumency shield issuing from somewhere ahead, nerves were starting to get the best of her in a way they hadn't since she'd first interviewed for MACUSA.

He'd never told her exactly what he wanted her to do—what if she couldn't do it at all? She'd been fooled before; maybe she wouldn't be able to get a proper read on him. Maybe it would be like Grindelwald all over again, and she squashed the comparison down as far as it would go as she opened another finely carved door and walked into the lobby where Graves stood waiting for her.

Instead of being expectant, even impatient, Graves looked... surprised. As if despite everything he'd done to assure her presence—the flash of promised money, the contract—he still hadn't thought she'd really show up. As if he was as unsure as she.

"Happy new year, Mr. Graves," she said, and when he made no move to greet her or take her coat, she looked around politely at the vases of fresh flowers in the corners of the room. "You got a real swell place. At least what I've seen of it."

He'd been holding his pocket watch—was she late after all?—and tucked it away with a cough. "Yes, I- Here." They did an awkward dance as she took her wand from her pocket so he could send her coat, scarf, and hat floating over to the coatrack before he led her to a larger room full of expensive furniture and light.

 _Cold_ white light—she shivered at the sight of so much snow falling past the large curtained windows, though there wasn't so much as a hint of a draft. There also wasn't the usual stuffy sense of a warming charm, which made her think the building was just that well-made.

"What a view," she said admiringly, rolling her wand between her fingers and struggling not to think too hard about how her and Tina's entire apartment could fit into this one room. "You can see the Armory from here, right?"

"Ordinarily."

There was the impatience she'd expected; so much for small talk.

Remembering what Tina had said—and not said—she turned away from the lovely view. When she made to take a seat on one of the silk cushioned chairs, however, Graves only shook his head.

"There." He gestured to the lone sofa, stormy gray to the chairs' light pearl, positioned before the windows and larger than both her and her sister's beds end to end.

"It's your show." Shrugging, she moved where indicated while he took one of the chairs facing her and the windows, unbuttoning his jacket before sitting. Even at home, he was in a three-piece suit. She suspected he slept in one too.

"Is this close enough? Or do I have to be... closer?" At her place he would've been across the room, but in these grand surroundings the distance was barely noticeable.

"That's close enough, Mr. Graves," she said with an automatic coyness, crossing her ankles, but when he didn't react she sighed. "We can see each other, that's really all I need."

"No touching, then."

She gave him a sideways look, wondering if that was a joke. Between his occlumency and the resumption of his usual blankness, she couldn't tell. Just in case… "I'm only gonna say this once: I ain't that kinda witch, so don't go getting any ideas. Money or no money-" She quieted as he held up one hand.

"I apologize. I didn't mean to imply whatever it is you think I'm implying." There was a flutter of muscle in his jaw as he lowered his hand to grip the wooden armrest. "I was simply confirming that you don't require the added assistance of physical contact for your ability to work."

"Sure you were," she said, twitching her skirt so it fell straight over her knee. Wearing her new purple dress had been a good idea; she felt less cowed in such fancy digs, with one of the most powerful wizards in the country giving her grief.

 _Formerly_ one of the most powerful, she corrected herself. Tina had said he'd stepped down—he wasn't the director of anything now.

"You already know I'm not some amateur," she continued, "and now you're distractin' me, so how about we quit stalling and get to the point of this whole thing already?"

Graves's sheepish tip of his head was concession enough.

Foot jiggling slightly with anticipation, she asked, hopefully for the last time, "When you said you want me to read your mind, what exactly do you want me to go lookin' for? There's gotta be something in particular you got... well, in mind."

For long minutes he didn't answer, only stared at some point past her, and she recalled how Tina had heard- Oh, what was that funny turn of phrase she'd used? _He falls into brown studies_ , she'd said. But that wasn't quite fitting for how he sat now, silent as the snow blustering outside.

It wasn't that he was brooding; he was absent. Even his occlumency shield seemed fainter than usual.

"Grindelwald had me for seven days," he said abruptly, startling her from her consideration of a glass vase full of funereal white flowers on a distant table. "December second to the ninth. That's a guess, of course, based on the lack of additions to my personal files from the first on. Otherwise I..." He grimaced, gaze fixed on the windows behind her. "I don't remember. I don't remember the circumstances of my abduction or how it was accomplished. I don't remember what manner of transfiguration he performed or potion he used to impersonate me, or where he kept me while he was off..." At last the chilly professionalism with which he'd been speaking faded, replaced by something bitter as old coffee left in the bottom of the pot. "While he was off ruining my life. I don't remember any of it.

"Grindelwald has been less than forthcoming. I want _you_ to tell me what happened to me."

Hands clasped tightly around the wand in her lap, Queenie looked away from his grim, gaunt face. Common knowledge it might be, it was still terrible to hear from the man himself how Grindelwald had hurt him. "How do you-"

"It isn't a spell or a memory charm or a _curse_ ," he said with something close to a snort of disgust as he shifted forward, knuckles flashing white where he gripped the end of the armrest. "I've been through all that with healers, other aurors. The cause can't be magical or I'd know by now. There'd be some sign. It's all still in there, it must be. If it weren't, I wouldn't have-"

"That's not what I was gonna say," she interjected softly, relieved when he settled back in the chair. "How do you know you didn't forget on purpose? Maybe… maybe you're better off not knowing any of it." Fidgeting with her wand, she couldn't help but think of Jacob. Day after day, week after week, and not so much as a teaspoon of recognition. She'd wondered sometimes, when she was walking down the street alone and everyone else in the world seemed happy to have someone to link arms with, if maybe- "Maybe you wanted to forget."

"I have dreams." He wasn't staring past her any longer; his dark eyes were like two deep holes that could swallow her as he continued with a bland despondency, "Nothing I recall except for how I feel when I wake up." His eyes flicked momentarily to something behind her. On the wall behind him, she saw the shadow of a gust of snow, like a ghost drifting through the room. "Why would I still dream about it if I really wanted to forget?"

Tempting to offer some excuse, _minds are strange things_ , the way Mrs. Dee back at school would say whenever she went to her for advice. But she couldn't, not when just that morning she'd woken up in a cold sweat because of what she'd heard in her own dreams. She never thought she'd be grateful to remember them, but the idea of being left with only a vague impression time after time was horrifying. At least she knew their source, even if their content was a terrifying muddle. Her own mind wasn't- wasn't _haunting_ her.

She hadn't helped Jacob, but then what sign had he given her that he needed it?

 _We-_ I _need your help_ , Picquery had said in her office. Far larger than the interrogation room where she'd had her chat with Allegan, but it felt stifling with the president's attention on her. _I need you to tell me what Grindelwald has done with Percival Graves._

She'd gasped then. _Ma'am, I swear I got no idea._ Shocked, and not needing to feign it. Steering clear of the president's mind had always been a given, even when an auror had taken her aside after Allegan was done, said Picquery wanted a word.

 _I know you don't,_ she'd said, her eyes keen, and Queenie had felt it. A pressure against a wall, the Big Bad Wolf huffing and puffing outside her house. _But you could if you tried._ That last unspoken, yet clear as anything she'd ever heard from Tina.

_Please, Miss Goldstein._

"Alright, Mr. Graves. I'll try." Chewing her lip for a moment, she leaned forward to set her wand on the coffee table between them before sitting back, flexing her hands and resting them on her knees. Shoulders back, sit up straight. "I dunno if I can do it, but I'll try." More déjà vu she didn't need.

The tension didn't drain out of him all at once or anything so dramatic; he closed his eyes tightly, once. "Do I need to do anything?"

"Besides quit it with that occlumency shield?" She gave him a smile as she shook her head. "No. I'm a big girl, I can..." _find my own way_ she'd meant to say, but had trailed off before she could complete the thought.

Something else had caught her attention. The muted _something_ from before, in her apartment, so different from the usual static of his mental barrier. Less like a skipping record this time and more like a wireless unit turning on, warming up and inaudible, and she wasn't so well-trained that she could resist leaning forward in her chair in anticipation only to slump when all she heard was... nothing.

Just like last time.

"I told you, you have to lower your-"

 _Lower your shield, but do not lower your defenses_ , Huld said, standing over him. _Never lower your defenses. Instead, raise the curtain, reveal the bait, and-_

Queenie shook her head. Conscious thoughts were AM radio, something she'd had years of practice at filtering out.

 _Grindelwald_ , he'd said, _Tell me what he did to me,_ but she couldn't find him in Graves's memory. She couldn't find anything at all. No matter how she concentrated, there was so much silence. Memories were FM, but if he was broadcasting then maybe she wasn't equipped to receive.

"Miss Goldstein."

Ridiculous. He wasn't a goblin—he was as human as she was, with a mind just alike in form if clearly not in function. Certainly as human as those No-Maj she'd read without a problem, and her sister, just that morning. Of course none of them were practiced occlumens like Graves, but still. If he'd lowered his occlumency shield enough that she could hear his thoughts-

_This is taking too long. What does she see? Why won't she say anything?_

-then there was no reason at all she shouldn't be able to find his memories and go through those as well. It wasn't as if he had an _accent_ to untangle. But the deeper she tried to probe, searching for any sense of his past, the more it felt as if the snow falling outside had finished blanketing the city and turned its attention to Graves. Sound always carried so strangely through the streets when the snowdrifts were five feet high. Everything was muted, hidden.

" _Miss Goldstein_."

His memories had to be in there—he'd be living a very different life if they weren't. Like Jacob.

If only she had a bright enough light to melt it all away, hear the drip of meltwater-

"Miss-"

"Sorry," she croaked before Graves could try to get her attention a third time, when she was sure he'd lose patience and shake her. She blinked suddenly tired eyes as he sat back down in his chair. Her mouth had gone dry—how long had she been at it? Licked her lips before she said, "Sorry. Lemme try again."

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Yes, I excluded _force majeure_ from the contract for a reason.
> 
> Islay & Ivy is based very loosely on the real Bank of New York, one of the oldest banks in the US. Its first president was Alexander McDougall, who was born on the Isle of Islay.
> 
> Someone savvy to NYC locales should be able to figure out where exactly I have placed Graves's apartment.
> 
> Feedback encouraged.


	3. Chapter 3

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> [This chapter has fanart!](https://letitflytoapril.tumblr.com/post/177874135310/inspired-by-non-disclosure-agreement-by) Wow!! Thanks so much to mulder-wtf/letitflytoapril for making something so lovely and non-spoilery (so you can go look at it now without fear 83), and for being such a big supporter of this fic. :'3333

Graves's head was killing him.

"You know, I'm sure I almost had something that time," Goldstein said apologetically. "Maybe if I-"

"No," he snapped, the word as good as a curse at silencing her. Yet there was no relief to be gained from being quick on the draw—her shock only made him feel guilty, and it was that as much as the light from the windows behind her that had him squeezing his eyes shut.

Three days. Three days of Goldstein showing up at his front door, taking a seat across from him, and being wholly unsuccessful at finding out what he so desperately wanted—needed—to know. Three afternoons of sitting useless, three evenings of bitter goodbyes in the face of her unceasing optimism.

 _I'm sure tomorrow I'll get it,_ she'd said after the first failed session.

 _You're just a bit knottier than I expected,_ she'd said after the second, and he'd nearly let himself be flattered. _Not everyone's so complex a puzzle as you._

_Almost there._

And three more nights of fruitless research, of apparating home from Bryant Park when his eyes started to burn, just to be chased by dreams of... he still couldn't say. Whatever it was that made him sweat and shake and wake himself up shouting was still a mystery no matter how much Goldstein sifted through his head, and he'd barely taken breath enough to tell her to leave when there was a rustle of fabric and a click of heels.

And a hand clasping his shoulder.

"Let's take a break, okay?" she said, hands upraised calmingly when he jerked back. Turning away as if she hadn't noticed how he'd tensed, she considered two of the reception room's three doors. "Which way to the kitchen?"

"Figure it out for yourself." So much for restraining his uglier urges. But she just shook her head and set out for the correct door with a soft sigh, leaving him with nothing to do but get to his feet and follow after her, praying his legs would forget their unsteadiness. Surely just from sitting down for so long; one of the many reasons he'd hated being trapped in the office.

The smirk she cut him threatened to widen further at his expense as he hurried to catch up, waving the door open for her, but it faded to awe instead as they entered the dining room. "Talk about puttin' on the Ritz," she said in a hushed voice. "You could throw a knock-out party in here, Mr. Graves."

Considering her Uptown apartment, he wasn't surprised by her reaction. A long mahogany dining table lined on both sides by matching chairs dominated the room the way a triumphant bull did the center of an arena. Chandeliers full of candles hung from the ceiling, many of their wicks flickering magically to life as he swiftly crossed the room. Ordinarily the additional light would've been unnecessary, thanks to the large windows to their right, but the room had gone unused for so long the curtains had forgotten their manners and remained firmly closed despite company.

Graves silently lit the rest of the candles, banishing as much of the darkness as he could and ignoring the twinge of pain in his temple at the increasing brightness. Goldstein's mouth was a perfect pink circle as she lagged behind to admire the sparkle of the chandeliers, the shine of the wood, the ornate Persian rug spread over the floorboards, but Graves saw little to enjoy. An empty room with too many shadows.

"If you don't like it, why do you live here?" she asked, running a hand lightly along the tops of the chair backs as she walked towards him. "And no, I ain't lookin' for dust. We both know it's charmed."

His head ached too much to bother with raising his occlumency shield, and it would've been defeating her purpose for being there if he did. "I don't remember," he said instead of calling her out on her intrusion, face impassive as she peered at him before passing through the open door to the pantry.

Besides, it was the truth, bitter though the taste of it was—he could've lived anywhere else. Could've stayed upstate at his family's house; it was well within his power to apparate to and from work every day from Albany. Instead he was here, in a No-Maj apartment that was far larger than he'd ever need.

"I think you do like it." Her cheerful words were at odds with the disappointment that briefly twisted her mouth as she took in the sight of the empty pantry.

Three long strides carried him through the dim room walled with bare shelves to another door and into the kitchen. Much more spacious, though no brighter; a twitch of his fingers sparked lightbulbs to life, the glow warming the tiled space as he rounded the kitchen island. Closer to the window, curtains shuffling aside as he leaned over the twin sinks.

Still snowing.

"You think," he said. "You don't know."

A rattling as she opened his fridge while he ran a tap and summoned a glass from one of the many cupboards. "I guess you're right," she tossed over her shoulder, and didn't give him a chance to respond to her teasing before she continued in a despairing tone, "Where's all your food? You don't even got any lettuce."

There was no defense he could muster up that wouldn't sound weak, so he didn't bother. He hadn't spent sunup to sundown at MACUSA headquarters—his usual—in over a week. Eating out, when he ate at all, was the product of ingrained habit rather than necessity now, he thought, water tasteless in his mouth as he drank and watched her from the corner of his eye, noting the pity that crossed her face quick as the snowflakes drifting past the window.

Still listening, then.

The crisper drawer clattered as Goldstein shoved it back in, emerging from the fridge holding one small red apple of indeterminate age. It was in fine condition—much like the rest of the apartment, he'd spared no expense on his appliances. It could've been months old; the charm to stop rot was impeccable.

She rubbed it thoughtfully against her hip, giving it a shine that matched the grin she aimed at him. "I've worked with less," she said, lobbing the apple up in the air and catching it as she searched the rest of the kitchen for scraps.

Nothing in those cupboards.

_Slap._

Crumbs in the bread box.

_Slap._

Bare shelves.

_Slap._

The apple, grown to the size of a grapefruit, struck her palm with a heavy, solid sound, and the glass creaked in his tensing hand as she idly swept the breadcrumbs she'd found across the island's countertop with the tip of her wand. Tossed the apple again.

_Slap._

Again.

_Slap._

Again-

 _Stop,_ he wanted to say. _Stop it, make her stop,_ but the last time he'd said that Grindelwald had only cocked his head— _his_ head—to the side and smiled that practiced society smile, his gaze never leaving the blonde woman standing across from them on the other side of the island.

 _She'll be done in a moment, I expect,_ he said, as if commenting on a mediocre singer whose set was nearing blissful completion. He had to raise his voice so Graves would hear him over the sound of the woman's forehead striking the marble countertop. It had been a sharp crack at first, but now-

_Slap._

Now it was so much meatier-

_Slap._

The glass in his hand popped.

His eyes slid continuously over the pristine countertop of the kitchen island. White as the world outside his apartment, it seemed impossible that there wasn't a mark left on it. Not a drop of blood, not a dent.

Not a dent.

 _She'll be done in a moment, I expect._ Golden curls tinged red, swinging back to frame what may have once been a pretty face. All he saw were her dull eyes, the growing crater that was her forehead, blood a glistening necklace around her throat.

Blood. He'd been wrong about there not being any on the marble. Once he was close enough to touch it he saw that there were streaks, drips and drops, a smear that might've been a palm print. It grew as he touched it, damp blotches under his fingers that were all wrong for what had happened. Her hands had never touched the counter, not even towards the end. Her rhythm had never faltered, she'd never needed to brace herself for balance the way he did as he recalled how she'd stared at him. Through him, really, but every time she straightened up, her blood misting his face like autumn fog, her eyes would meet his own for a fraction of a second.

Incidentally, surely; there was nothing left in them, no sense of emotion. No awareness. Not even gratitude when he took advantage of Grindelwald's momentary distraction to reach out and grip her hair tight-

Something smacked his cheek, but it didn't match the remembered pain of Grindelwald's curse. That had dropped him to his knees, the woman's lifeless body concealed from view by the island. But he knew her eyes would still be open, still staring, that it would still be too late-

 _You missed out again, Theodore,_ Grindelwald said, as if informing someone of a Portkey triggered early. _Get him up, and be quicker about it,_ and someone was turning him-

Turning-

A twisting full-body squeeze, as if he were wet laundry being wrung out, followed swiftly by a second much harder strike to his face. One or both of those unexpected sensations sent him staggering back, cupping his face instinctively and blinking in the shifting light.

"Mr. Graves." Goldstein sounded so much like an aggrieved parent that he nearly overlooked how she'd raised her wand defensively.

"You slapped me," he said, voice hollow as a termite-eaten tree. Wiping dampness off his face with one hand, he couldn't help but imagine—remember—thicker things than blood on his skin. But a throb was spreading over his cheek, an ache familiar from childhood that suffused his face with an almost welcome heat.

"You weren't listening." Her wand—why had she drawn her wand?—was steady and pointed at his chest.

The first unbloody thought he had was that her stance was excellent. A modified Waverly that left her body angled away from his so as to present a smaller target. One foot forward for her to throw her weight into whatever spell she cast, one back should she need to lean out of the way instead. Textbook. Not the position he'd expect an amateur to take.

Her wand dipped slightly. Unprofessional. "My sister taught me. She used to pinch me every time my wrist went all limp, that's why my arm's so straight," she said. "Since you're wonderin'."

The sheer mundanity of her explanation—of course an auror would teach her sister, her only living family, how best to defend herself—blew away the lingering fog of horror that clouded his good sense. Or perhaps it was the way her eyes, glittering green like new ivy leaves touched with morning dew, never left his own. So different from Grindelwald's eyes, the one dark blue, the other milky as a snake's egg.

He lowered the wand he hadn't consciously aimed and turned away; bad form when she yet held hers at the ready. "I-I'm sorry," he croaked out before he dropped his wand onto the nearby table with a thin clatter. There was a chair waiting for him—in fact, there were chairs everywhere. The dining room. Only two rooms over, but it was a world away from the abattoir that existed in his memory.

He hadn't even noticed her pulling him into side-along apparition. He hadn't noticed anything, not after he'd-

"Christ," he whispered, pressing a hand to his forehead, threading his fingers through his hair as he shut his eyes tight. An immediate error—it was too dark inside his own head, too lonely, and his fingers were wet with-

"Oh, honey, don't do that." Heels clicked loudly on the polished floorboards, warning again of her approach, but he couldn't bring himself to pull away when she tugged at his wrist. There was a _whoosh_ of heavy fabric as the curtains shrugged away from the windows while she pushed him down onto a chair with an insistent hand on his shoulder.

"Look at me."

He opened his eyes. With all the candles lit and the windows finally bared, it was more than bright enough to make him wince. Just that, and the headache that roared between his ears in a fury that he'd dared forgotten it, and not how the light made her blonde hair shine like polished gold, untouched by blood.

"You're here, okay? Nowhere else." She gripped his shoulder, gaze direct, and there was a feeling like wrinkled silk being smoothed flat over the surface of his mind. "Let me help you."

It wasn't her legilimency alone that made her offer too difficult to resist.

 

 

"Should I use _epidiorthosy_ , do you think?" Goldstein worried her lip as she waved her wand slowly back and forth over his palm, transfiguring the shards of glass in his hand to water droplets. "Or would _episkey_ be enough?"

"It doesn't matter," he said, struggling to hold his hand steady. "Get on with it already."

 _It wouldn't be fair,_ she'd said. _You were holding the glass, but I was holding the apple._ A chair had turned itself about so that she could take a seat before him. _I should've noticed what was happening faster._ There had been a good deal of regret in her eyes that belied her peppy tone as she held out her hand for his wounded one. _Here, give._

As he had in the lobby of her apartment, he'd found himself folding under her gaze. Not because she was exerting any sort of magical control—she didn't have to, not when part of him wondered if, just maybe, she'd be able to do what the best healers in the country hadn't so far.

Do _again_ —hadn't she cracked open a piece of his memory? He shoved that away to focus on Goldstein, still chewing her lip.

"Pick whichever you're most comfortable with," he tried again, with less bark than before.

"I- Right, okay," she said, and began to wave her wand back and forth in the broader motion of _episkey_. Her pale face was hidden as she bowed her head over his hand, her fingers light against his as she tilted his hand this way and that as she murmured the healing spell. Rather than comment on the faint tremble that shivered through him, she guided the tip of her wand over the tears the way one would a paintbrush over canvas.

Despite the magic, his hand continued to sting as though the glass had been ground up and scrubbed into his flesh. So much for his progress over the last month. The skin on his hand was torn again, and not just on the palm—the sharp bones of his knuckles peeked through strips as fine as Bible paper. The pain was intense, but no less disturbing was the sensation of fresh blood on his skin.

"Is this helping at all?" she asked after long minutes of healing magic pooling over his hand with all the pleasure of acid. "Maybe I should've used _epidiorthosy_ after all, it doesn't look like anything's happening."

So much for that.

"That's because it isn't." He snatched his hand out of hers, cradling it close as his handkerchief snapped out of his pocket to wrap itself tightly around the damage. The sweet scent of her perfume and failed magic followed him as he got to his feet and headed towards the door. "I won't require any more of your help this afternoon," he said, wand rolling itself off the table and flying to his good hand as he made for the lobby. The handle was tacky. Something else to clean up.

Doubtless she sensed his desire to see her gone, to be alone, but she didn't budge from her seat by the dining room table. "Shouldn't we..."

 _Shouldn't we talk about what happened?_ That's what everyone wanted to do—pry. The tremble in his hand intensified as he flicked his wand at the door; it banged off the wall after it flew open. "Now is not-"

"I wish you'd stop puttin' words in my mouth," she said with such banality that he froze, door stilling instantly. "I wasn't gonna suggest anything like that, not when you're all balled up." There was no trace of her legilimency, but that meant little when he hadn't detected it at all earlier. Just as he hadn't noticed her spelling his shed blood off her skirt.

Perhaps the hammering in his skull was distracting him. "Whatever _you_ were going to suggest can wait," he gritted out, patience dwindling like the last grains of sand in an hourglass's top. What else could she want to say? "Whatever healing potions or creams or- or home remedies…" His eyelid twitched as he struggled to control his emotions enough to bring up his occlumency shield.

"What about lunch?" To his amazement, there was no hesitation in her step as she joined him at the door. In fact, a bit of color had come back to her face: pink spots in her cheeks. "I'm sure you've had enough people recommend those other things to you, but have you forgotten 'bout food?" she asked, sternness proving temporary as she continued in a kinder tone, "No wizard can live off coffee alone. I should know."

It was easy to blame her perfume—fresh-crushed berries and fine sugar—as much as her words for soliciting a loud rumble of agreement from his empty stomach, but the urge to dig in his heels intensified. He'd followed her once already and look what had happened, where would a second time take him?

A troubled glance was all it took her to mark his burgeoning refusal, and he braced himself for any number of responses. A teasing remark about his noisy gut, maybe, or a girlish appeal to whatever chivalry she thought he possessed. _You ain't gonna make me eat all by myself, are you?_

Instead her eyes grew distant. "It stopped snowin'," she said, a small smile flitting across her face with a robin's hopefulness.

It had—the view was clear across Park Avenue, showing blue skies above and forgiving white blankets below. The Armory's rough No-Maj architecture was hidden away, along with the rest of the city's typical grime. He nearly forgot for a moment that it had ever looked anything but clean.

 

 

He seldom entered his own bedroom; with Grindelwald's shadow looming large and unwanted in his mind, he avoided it now shamelessly. Confident Miss Goldstein wouldn't come snooping in the next ten minutes—after claiming a need to freshen up, she'd lifted the directions to the nearest bathroom from his prompted mind and hurried off with a wave—he apparated to one of the two guest bedrooms.

It necessitated the use of his wand, just as summoning his suit jacket and opening the door had—two spells he hadn't needed his wand for in decades. He couldn't focus.

Little wonder why. The light in the small ensuite bathroom—from an overhead fixture and two windows to his right—made his head throb as he rummaged through the medicine cabinet before locating the dusty container of Ache-Away powder hidden behind the jar of bezoars and bandages left over from his days in the field.

After choking down three foaming gulps in quick succession, Graves left the container in the sink and sat down with a cough on the toilet seat lid, wand on the sill as he worked to unbutton his waistcoat with fingers that were in no rush to cooperate. Fever-hot disappointment filled him at the reminder of Goldstein's failure to fix his _other_ problem; he left off the buttons and turned his attention instead to the sodden handkerchief still wound around his hand.

Blood. What he recalled of her face before she'd made a ruin of it was startlingly familiar in its resemblance to Goldstein's. The same blonde hair that he remembered with sickening clarity seizing tightly in his fist, her scalp sweat-damp as he jerked her forward.

And her eyes... had they been green too?

His stomach surged as the kerchief, sealed in place by blood, clung to his skin. Biting his cheek hard against the urge to vomit as he tore it off, he sent it to the sink before tugging at the knot of his tie with his good hand. The view out of the narrow window over the toilet wasn't as good as from the larger rooms, just down into a deserted courtyard formed by his building and the one beside it. But it was a distraction that improved the closet-like space with an icy breeze after he cracked the window, and the sight of so much undisturbed snow was soothing. It was something Grindelwald had never touched. There was precious little else in his life that could make such a claim, but hadn't he wanted to know the extent to which that was true?

Feeling empty, knowing for once exactly what he'd dream of that night, he got to his feet to wrench off his waistcoat, ignoring the bloody smears he left on it. At least his headache had mostly dissipated; he no longer needed to rely on his wand to manage a basic summoning charm for a clean shirt. Simple enough to charm the one he wore back to its morning crispness, but it wouldn't be the same. He'd know how he'd sweat in it, bled on it. Panicked in it.

Equally simple to summon the squat blue tub from elsewhere in the apartment; it arrived seconds after his shirt did, floating through the bathroom door he'd deliberately left open. The lid spun itself rapidly off while the drinking glass was still growing large enough to hold his hand.

The shirt waited patiently as he refilled the bucket-sized glass with warm water and smeared a gob of white lotion from the tub on the bottom of the glass, water sloshing. No fizz like with the headache powder; the water remained calm even as it turned green. Faint as dusty ferns at first, a soft scent of lemon filled the bathroom as the color deepened to a rich seaweed while he rolled up his shirt cuff.

When he submerged his hand entirely in the opaque water, lavender and the spicy green of basil greeted him as he finally exhaled and breathed in, the water rippling with the slight movement. There was still pain—it was no miracle cure—but less acute than before, and soon the persistent stabbing was replaced by a more diffuse sensation of a too-hard scrubbing with a coarse brush.

After five minutes or so, he pulled his hand out, silently thanking Healer Merriweather for the hundredth time as he found the latest injury mostly healed. The skin itself, as ever, was delicate as tissue paper, veins blue and visible through it, but it was whole again. He could ignore the red lines that trailed up from his knuckles and over his palm like cracks in a window. So long as he was very, very careful, they wouldn't break open again any time soon.

Fucking Grindelwald. It hadn't been enough to ruin his life, he'd had to ruin his health as well. If only he had some semblance of an idea of what he'd done, he thought as he began to strip off his old shirt. A clue, then he might be able to reverse-engineer a-

It wasn't just the sleeve of the shirt dragging over his recently-repaired skin that made him shiver, but something less tangible and more sudden. A touch that sent the hair on his arms standing up, and he gasped as that same touch retreated. Goldstein's sudden intrusion left him staring wide-eyed into the mirror.

Grindelwald's disguise, however it had been accomplished, had been perfect. Every report he'd read, interview he'd listened to, bit of whispered gossip he'd overheard, had agreed on that. No one at first or second or even fifth glance had suspected a thing. And, at last, his own memory corroborated it—begging Grindelwald to do something had meant begging himself to act, the confusion enough to give him vertigo.

Gripping the rim of the porcelain sink as tightly as he dared, he forced himself to take in the sight of his reflection, only to feel a swell of disgust. Grindelwald's disguise _had_ been perfect. Now there was the Graves everyone remembered—the Graves Grindelwald had so easily impersonated—and the Graves that presently existed, and there was no chance at all of confusing the two. Not when the differences were so obvious.

The black hair so characteristic of his family was shot through with white; his face had lost much of its healthy roundness, lending an air of fragility to his nose and cheekbones; his shirt made his pale skin look ashy, almost gray.

And then there were the scars. While the lines on his hand might fade in another week, he'd lost hope of the ones on his face ever healing more than they had. Though bright as the day he'd checked out of Saint Dymphna's, at least they no longer bled. Cold comfort when he tilted his head and traced a finger up the side of the longer one, the skin puckered in a deep groove as it arched over the sharp rise of his cheekbone.

 _Rare for an auror to survive the job without anything to show for it,_ one healer had too-cheerfully told him. _At least you've still got all your bits and bobs._

That, too, was cold comfort. He'd never thought himself vain, but he could admit, finally, that he'd been avoiding mirrors for quite some time, trusting to magic for shaving and grooming purposes. The effort wasn't the least bit unconscious; he'd known full well how he looked—he'd been reminded every time he went to work or the _Wizard's Voice_ found some new aspect of the scandal to slap on their front page. Every day his colleagues stuttered and couldn't make eye contact, or couldn't tear their eyes away and stuttered all the worse.

No wonder Goldstein was so free with her pitying smiles, he thought, neutrally considering the faint bruise on his cheek from where she'd slapped him, and, less neutrally, the smudge of blood at his hairline. Had he reckoned her access to his thoughts greater than it really was? Maybe she was merely reacting to his sorry appearance without any deeper insight—a possibility that only gained strength as he licked his thumb to rub the smear of blood off his forehead.

Another brush of silk, like the lacy edge of a witch's cuff, jolted him out of his wool-gathering and without a second thought he pushed her out of his head. It was a relief to bring up his occlumency shield—it meant setting aside the dejection brought on by the state of his looks, the lingering revulsion over what he'd remembered. What he'd done, and not all of it in the distant past.

She was a civilian, and he had nearly-

He would have to steel himself further, he decided, healing the bruise before washing the blood off his face and wand, exchanging one white shirt for another. There was no alternative to the plan he had hurriedly cobbled together in the span of days, the product of a decision made in a desperate split-second, and wringing his hands over it would accomplish nothing. He would just have to be more careful. Vigilant.

And if Goldstein's pity would foster her assistance, so much the better.

 

 

 

When Graves apparated to the lobby, he was met by the sight of a Goldstein who had clearly been waiting for some time. Already dressed for the winter weather, his black wool coat was folded over her arm while she leaned forward to sniff at the flowers in one of the corner vases.

"All set?" Her eyes quickly skimmed down and then back up his form. If she noticed he'd changed shirts—as the thoughtful quirk of her eyebrows suggested she did—she wisely refrained from commenting.

"Yes." He resisted the urge to check that the old-fashioned copper charms he wore to prevent magical impersonation were well out of sight—he knew they were. As always, they were a pleasant warmth against his bare chest, hidden under layers of clothes.

Rather than complain about how long he'd taken, she held out one of his heavier scarves, previously concealed by the mass of his coat. "You're gonna need this."

She looked very much at home, he realized with some discomfort. Having read her file and seen her apartment, he knew she had no great experience with anything resembling wealth. Yet there was no sense of the outsider as she stood patiently, her form framed by a vase worth more than a year of her pay and a landscape of his family's old estate in Albany, fanciful deer running across the vast lawn.

As he muttered assent and took his scarf—the dark green one that matched her hat—he felt that their positions had somehow been reversed: she the hostess, he the guest.

"Since you're so keen on keepin' this whole thing under wraps, I figure you don't wanna go to any of the usual places to grab a bite," she said, handing over his coat once he'd looped his scarf around his neck. "But I know just the spot."

"Where-" He'd barely had a chance to pocket his wand before she'd hooked her arm through his and disapparated the two of them to... somewhere.

Somewhere bitterly cold. The shocking temperature change was more to blame for his rough exhalation than their sudden departure—as before, side-along apparition with Goldstein was nearly as smooth as when he traveled alone.

Fetching his gloves out of his pocket, he tugged them on at once, glowering at her. "What made you think our arrangement is so secretive that we had no other options but to eat at a No-Maj establishment?" Because sure enough that's where she'd taken them.

Beyond the alley they stood in, No-Maj men and women muddled through the drifts as fast as they could, collars and scarves pulled up high to shield their faces. Across the street, down which cars and laboring horses were already at the slow work of churning snow into dirty slush, the clumsy fire escapes No-Maj relied upon covered the faces of tenement houses, rails dangerous under generous coats of ice.

"Ain't it?" She led him forward to the sidewalk with her habitual smile, but her attention was elsewhere as she made her way down the street, surveying the area as she continued absently, "That contract of yours made a real big deal out of not tellin' nobody nothin'."

"About what we discuss in the course of our arrangement, not about the arrangement itself," he gritted out, dogging her steps and too busy struggling to figure out where in the city they were to point out the irony of her discussing something supposedly confidential within earshot of perfect strangers. Instead he took note of a bridge for the train before them; traffic moving with instead of against them; motionless signs advertising women's tailors and men's suits, hot food and fresh bread, the majority in English but others in Hebrew.

At last: a street sign. Orchard.

The Lower East Side. His relief at placing them firmly within the well-trodden geography of Manhattan was equalled only by that which he felt after silently cast a warming charm to fend off the cold.

"'The arrangement,'" she repeated. There was nothing preoccupied about the cheeky grin she gave him over her shoulder. "Sounds so fancy. But whatever you call it, you know one thing always leads to another. People are just too curious for your own good," she said as she maneuvered around a couple laden with brown paper shopping bags.

 _Your own good_. No need for a pointed look; her meaning, intentional or not, was plain. He also should've thought three steps ahead instead of two. Surely someone had already noticed them at the bank together, though it wouldn't be Ashbourne who spread it around. Still... "What did you tell your sister?" he asked, weaving deftly around a No-Maj woman herding a collection of children.

"Filing job with Prudy Carraway," she answered immediately, head swivelling this way and that to read the signs hanging overhead before moving on. "You might wanna tell _her_ that. Not that Tina has time to be curious, but you never know, huh? Ah, here we are," she said cheerfully, stopping so abruptly Graves almost ran into her. "You'd think I'd remember where it was after so many visits."

Wherever _here_ was it didn't look any different from the dozen or more storefronts they'd already hurried past. Worn wood and chipped brick, bleary windows. They had to step out of the way when the door clanged open as a No-Maj man hurried out, clutching a bulky paper bag in one arm, the heavy smell of fried food escaping out into the street after him.

Goldstein flashed him an excited smile as she stepped into a densely packed restaurant, carrying on ahead while he faltered a foot or so from the door, eyeing the crush. Not a familiar face amongst the bunch. Many were huddled over tiny tables, scarfing down hot food, while many more, milling like cattle, waited on their orders. No-Maj cooks bustled back and forth on the opposite side of the counter, passing plates across to customers while steam billowed, cutlery clattered; the roar of conversation and shouted ticket numbers was endless.

Elbows and shoulders knocked against him from either direction as No-Maj shoved past, forcing him further into the room, grimacing in irritation that swiftly faded.

A man in a heavy coat; a steel-haired woman in fur-trimmed wool. Brown eyes, blue, gray, meeting his for an instant before they were gone. Person after person and he didn't know a soul, but it was swiftly impossible to shake the feeling that they all knew him. Knew how his leather gloves clung to his clammy palms, how his chest tightened. How despite his clean shirt, his charms, a layer of fresh sweat dirtied his skin. There was no trace of pity or fear in those alien faces, emotions sickeningly common amongst his MACUSA colleagues, but every fleeting glance seemed full of cruel amusement as they took in his scarred face. The next set of eyes he met would be mismatched, he knew it.

Knew they'd belong to-

A mother and child, both with matching brown eyes and paper bags dotted with grease.

The person after them then. Or the next.

But the next person who came near him was Miss Goldstein, a hand up as she pushed her way back through the crowd to stand before him and say, "They have the best pierogi in the city, honest."

He sucked in a deep breath at the familiar sight of her. At least she was a known quantity, and her eyes, decidedly green in the warm yellow light of the restaurant, were free of mockery.

Her smile shrank when he didn't answer immediately. "Ain't you coming?"

Tugging unconsciously at his too-tight scarf, he silently dismissed the warming charm, sure that it was to blame for his flush. Or perhaps it was the low ceiling, the windows that couldn't open, the kitchen running at full capacity and all the bodies, the line snaking endlessly forward towards a distant but harried cashier. The people coming at him in ones and twos, bumping him. Bruising him.

Goldstein had lost her place because of him.

"I'll wait outside," he said, stepping blindly back. Right into someone, judging by the startled squawk that sent his hand plunging into his pocket for his wand, but Goldstein caught his sleeve in time to avoid disaster. So much for vigilance.

"How 'bout I order for you?" she said with a deliberation that made him concentrate all the harder on keeping his occlumency shield steady as he released his wand. "Okay?"

"Fine." Jerking his arm out of her grasp, chest tight, he wanted nothing more than to disapparate out of the overcrowded room. Instead, barely sparing the peeved-looking No-Maj man he'd stepped on a perfunctory nod of apology, he forced his way through the line that had formed behind him to the door.

Though the street was just as crowded as before, the breeze against his face was crisp and there was a visible patch of white-blue sky overhead, between the looming buildings, and that was a enough. Nobody gave him any looks as he installed himself in an alcove a few feet away from the restaurant's entrance, beside a dirty set of stairs leading up to an apartment.

How many times had he embarrassed himself before her? It had been no more than a week since he'd first approached her and already he'd lost count. Shuffling where he stood, the desire to run home and hide sparked and died in an instant, snuffed out by the sure knowledge that Goldstein would be on his doorstep the next day, ready to scold him for being so rude as to abandon her.

Why was she so tolerant? It couldn't have been out of fear, not if her reluctance to leave him was any indication. Was it down to her legilimency forewarning her or a simple lack of good sense? Or were her motives financial? The money he'd promised her was significant, but had their positions been reversed he would have been ready to call an end to things after the first time she'd pulled a wand on him.

The _first_ time. How many more times would that happen? Despite his determination to stiffen his spine, he'd been ready to curse everyone in sight minutes ago if it meant they'd give him some room. And she'd known it. She'd stopped him. Rubbing at his forehead, his headache stirring back to life, he wondered how many more times she'd be willing to put up with his bad behavior.

Christ, no wonder Picquery had wanted him out.

Close on the heels of that thought, Goldstein reemerged from the restaurant and headed unfailingly for him.

"I wasn't sure what you'd like, so I guessed," she said, joining him by the stairs with a lumpy brown paper bag of her own. Glancing quickly to check no one was paying any attention, she tapped the bag with her wand to shrink it to a size no greater than her purse. "Much better."

Rather than thank her, he found himself saying instead, "You were quicker than I expected."

"A witch has her ways," she said with a playful grin before she stepped away, back to the sidewalk. "Let's eat in the park where it's not so go go go."

She'd done something that skirted the limits of Rappaport; his years as an auror left little doubt in his mind about that. He should've demanded a fuller explanation, but to what end? It wasn't as though he was in any position to prosecute her for so much as a misdemeanor and they both knew it.

Or he could've insisted they go their separate ways for the day.

"C'mon already, the food's getting cold," she said, plucking at his sleeve in the instant he took to weigh his options. "Unless you want dessert?" She shot a wistful look at the bakery across the street.

Muttering a denial, he followed her back down the street to another alley where they could disapparate without drawing unwanted attention. Not for the first time, he realized that food wasn't the only thing she was capable of charming.

 

 

"Your head still hurts, don't it?" A thoughtful crunching as Goldstein, seated beside him on the bench he'd cleared of snow, popped a slice of pickle in her mouth. She'd spent much of their luncheon in silent contemplation. Of the park, he'd thought, as empty of No-Maj as it was full of snow, but now she stared at him unblinkingly as she chewed. Perhaps not the park after all.

And her silence, novel as it had been, appeared to have come to an end.

"Not as much." Dragging the last chunk of dark rye bread along the bottom of the bowl he'd transfigured from the cup she'd pulled from the brown bag, he considered admitting she'd been right. _I forget sometimes coffee isn't a proper substitute for real food._ But the silence stretched until it was too awkward to break. Wet with the remnants of the beet borscht Goldstein had bought for him, he tore into the bread with teeth that no longer felt like they were floating, unmoored from a jaw strung tight with pain.

The food had been more effective at banishing his headache than the Ache-Away powder. And, perhaps, the fresh air and quiet of the largely-abandoned Mall had helped as well, though neither did anything for the bruises he could feel rising from being bumped in the restaurant. At least the warming charm he'd cast was a distraction; it had left a circle of bare earth around them, and beyond it the wind blustered on, blowing snow against the outer edge of his magic and producing a soft tinkling sound like fine crystal in another room.

"You oughta eat more," Goldstein said frankly, unknowingly echoing his thoughts as she reached for the last pickle slice from the bag hovering in mid-air before her. "But it ain't just that. It's been hurting a while."

No trace of a question to her words, but he felt compelled to answer nonetheless. "Maybe because you've been rooting around in there. Unsuccessfully, I might add."

"Nah." Her blithe response rankled, but she only shrugged and continued to chew unhurriedly before elaborating, "I mean, I guess it's possible, but Tina never complained about me hurting her in twenty years. Annoying her, sure, but not _hurting_ her. No one has. You'd be the first." Wiping her bare fingers on a napkin, she reached for the cup of tea floating before her, tacking on as an after-thought, "You ask me, it's your occlumency shield that's to blame."

"That's ridiculous," he said flatly. "Occlumency is one of the most passive forms of defensive magic around. Yes, it requires some concentration, but a proper shield-"

"Yeah, a _proper_ shield," she said, pointing at him. "But what you're doing ain't proper. I would've been able to hear any normal fella the minute we sat down together in that cute little sitting room of yours, but with you..." She shook her head, curls swaying side to side from under her dark green hat. "It was like a fog or- Gosh, I dunno what I thought it was, but it's so obvious now," she said, then drained her teacup with plenty of self-satisfaction.

An emotion Graves didn't share. "I know when I'm occluding you, and when I'm not," he said with rising irritation. "Are you implying I don't?"

A tap of her wand dried the cup, shrank it, and sent it zooming back into her purse in short order. "Nobody ever listens," she muttered to herself before continuing, louder, "Sure, that's exactly what I'm saying." The scolding she looked ready to give him promised a retread of what had occurred in the bank, but then, horribly, her expression crumpled. "I doubt you even know you're doing it, but I'm telling you, dragots to donuts, it's occlumency," she said, voice rough with sympathy.

With _pity_.

"No." Ignoring her surprise at his curt response, he waved his hand carelessly, nonverbal magic setting the various garbage of their lunch to gathering itself up. "No, you're mistaken," he said as proof of his control rendered the garbage into a fine dust.

"I'm sure that's why your head hurts all the time, and why you're always so tired," she insisted, twisting her napkin absently in her lap. "Not just from the effort of keeping the shield up—it ain't just me you're trying to keep out. You're keeping _you_ out."

"They looked for everything," he said, voice as coldly unfeeling as the wind that blew the cloud of dust away. Contrary to what she said, his occlumency depended not on reflex, but on self-control—he couldn't afford to let it waver now. Not when she'd take it as a sign her theory had merit. Which it did not. "Memory charms, mental curses, a magical block that Grindelwald installed. All of it. They didn't find anything like what you're describing."

Rather than break under his negativity, Goldstein bent. "Why would they? It's nothing Grindelwald did, and that's all they were looking for. It's something _you_ did," she said, finger darting out to poke him lightly in the shoulder before she thoughtfully amended, "Well, something you're doing."

He wasn't sure which upset him more, her words or her casually friendly action. "I've seen the best, Miss Goldstein," he said, voice steady as he got to his feet, a flick of his fingers banishing scattered bread crumbs from his coat. "I've been from one side of the country to the other, been examined by wizards and witches with more training and expertise than you could dream of. None of them saw so much as a hint of what you're suggesting, but you expect me to take you at your word?"

He paused long enough to fix his scarf, the disbelief in his words frosty enough to chill the air and set Goldstein's shoulders to hunching.

"Why should I?" he continued. "What solid evidence do you have? What credentials can you swear by? Granted you have a knack, but your education, so far as I've discovered, is no more exceptional than what any run-of-the-mill coffee witch could brag about, and given your work history..." He shook his head, taking his gloves from his pocket. "Your housekeeping is laudable, but we both know your sister has more to recommend her when it comes to this sort of work.

"Assuming for a moment that you are right," he continued, carefully pulling on his gloves and unconsciously emulating his father's tone of obnoxious elitism, "and I _have_ been subconsciously occluding myself in an effort to keep from remembering, how would you suggest I stop?"

"I dunno," she whispered, barely audible over the pinging snowflakes.

Only after he was perfectly re-dressed did he look at her face, and then his armor failed to protect him from regret.

She was flushed, her typically forward gaze lowered as she clasped her hands together so tightly her knuckles stood out in bony relief. "I don't know how to fix it," she repeated, louder, and when she looked up at him her eyes were glittering with unshed tears. "You're right, I don't know a thing about curses, I don't have Tina's fancy auror training, and most of the charms I know are only good for cooking or cleaning," she said, twisting her hands in her lap, but her voice strengthened. "But I do know somethin' about your situation, Mr. Graves."

"And that is?" he asked as if prompted, heart thudding.

"I know you saw all those other folks, you went through all their tests and drank all their potions and did who knows what else, and when none of it worked you came looking for me." She got to her feet, forcing him back a step, but there was nothing aggressive about her movement. Nothing unpleasant, and that was somehow worse than if she'd been shouting at him. "You found me out, you bullied me into your silly contract, and now that I figured out what's going on you don't like it, do you?" she asked with a wavering smile as she slowly took her wand from her coat pocket, the motion so obvious he couldn't possibly be alarmed.

And that was deliberate too, he knew, biting the inside of his cheek as he looked away.

"'Cause I'm just some dumb coffee witch who happens to be able to hear what everyone else's thinking." Her laugh was soft and pretty enough that it barely sounded forced. "You must be so embarrassed." Careful not to touch him as she passed, she walked over the slushy boundary of the warming charm and into the chill, calling over her shoulder, "Don't worry, honey, we both know I won't tell anyone."

There was a _crack_ , like thunder, and she was gone.

 

 

Graves's prediction came partly true: he did dream of the kitchen. But Grindelwald was absent, and the woman before him was Queenie Goldstein, and when he woke up it was with her words repeating over and over in his head like a record skipping.

_It's something you did._

The sudden cold shock of tile flooring against bare feet startled him out of the fog of panting confusion he'd found himself in; he wheeled about, half-expecting to see Grindelwald or Goldstein waiting behind him. But there was no one, just the humming fridge, the spotless counters, the corner of the island that knocked hard into his hip and added another bruise to his collection. Pain snapped through him and he apparated at once to the first safe place in the apartment that sprang to mind—the reception room.

Legs too unsteady to carry him around the gray couch that Goldstein had spent many a patient afternoon on, he sank instead to the floor beside it. He knew he should get up, go shower, research, do anything but remain where he was. On the floor and useless like he was a child again, waiting for his heartbeat to slow to a more manageable pace, charms rattling against his bare chest with the force of his shivering.

It all seemed beyond him.

Just as controlling his magic evidently was. There was no chance he'd risen from the guest bed and sleep-walked through his apartment; he knew in his core he'd apparated. What else might he do? He dropped his hands from his sweaty forehead to chafe some warmth back into his bare arms, the bruise-mottled skin covered in goosebumps despite the moderate temperature of the room.

What else might he do? What had he _done_ already?

The disgust that continuously rippled through him could've come from any part of the dream—the horror of Goldstein cracking her skull open before him, accusing him the whole time as if she were a newly-born fury intent on haunting him for his mistake; the bloodthirsty resentment he'd felt that she'd forced him to end things; the act itself. The curve of her skull against his palm, the sound of it cracking like an eggshell against a bowl.

He clasped his hands tight, willing them to stop shaking. To do what Goldstein said he was so skilled at and _forget_.

As he had forgotten the poor woman whose place Goldstein had so easily taken in his dreaming, mixed-up mind. He recalled nothing more about her than what he'd seen that first time—eyes that were perhaps hazel, a hint of prettiness to her facial proportions before she'd ruined them. Who was she?

Though the proper thing to do would be to look into the unknown woman's identity and fate, he knew just as well that deep down he didn't want to learn anything about her. He didn't want to know who she'd been, how she'd ended up in his kitchen, or what else Grindelwald had subjected her to—or forced Graves himself to do in his stead.

Yet continuing to ignore her as he had been—and he'd been doing a truly excellent job since he'd become aware of her existence—would be the ultimate betrayal of everything he'd believed in and worked for, and he couldn't allow that. Grindelwald had temporarily taken his identity; he would not allow him to permanently steal his morality.

Which meant accepting that Queenie Goldstein was right. No matter how much he wanted to deny it or pretend differently, it was pointless to do anything but admit that she'd been right about everything. Right about his memory—her occlusion theory made too much sense. It handily explained why his dreams were a full-color torment, and why those same dreams vanished as soon as he regained awareness. Occlusion was a magic of self-awareness and concentration, and both became impossible the moment a person's mind drifted to sleep, only practicable once consciousness returned. A defense born of necessity, not emotion—the definitive act of self-preservation.

Her theory—solution, really—fit too neatly into his entire run-down life. His perpetual headaches and exhaustion, fueled by poor diet and lack of solid sleep, surely stemmed from the inherent conflict of occluding himself while still trying to peer around the barrier.

It was so goddamn obvious it made him fume. And that, too, she'd been right about—he resented that she'd gotten to the bottom of it before he could, and for all the reasons she'd listed. The thought that his restraint might be far worse than he'd ever feared had sent him flailing, and he'd clung to the worst trait of his family—snobbery. And worse than snobbery—outright calling her an ignorant office drone may have been less insulting than what he'd said.

"Damn," he gritted out, scraping his fingers roughly back through his lank hair. If she were half as prideful as he was, she'd slam the door in his face before he could get a word of honest contrition out. And he did feel contrite. All she'd done was her best to help him, and he'd rewarded her good-humored efforts with threats, belittlement, suspicion, and general ill-treatment such as what he'd never once thought to deal out at MACUSA to anyone, supervisor or underling.

There was nothing else for it—he'd have to apologize. And if she wanted nothing more to do with him then that would be entirely within her rights.

But there was only one way to find out.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Does occlumency work like this? IT DOES NOW.
> 
> Feedback encouraged.


	4. Chapter 4

_Is this a social call?_ Grindelwald had asked.

 _Strictly business,_ she'd thought as Grindelwald's smile grew. _Where's Mr. Graves?_

She'd expected any number of responses to her question: the maniacal laughter of a villain in a wireless drama, for starters. Sneering continental criticism of her lack of manners, how she didn't say _please_ , how she didn't ask permission before she reached for his mind. Maybe he'd feign ignorance as she twisted the dial this way and that, searching for him. Filtering everyone else out, mapping his presence by listening for the pause—the pattern—between others' beats.

What had in reality taken mere seconds always felt like it took hours in her dreams—stretching her ears, her magic, extending herself into the darkness and listening so hard that the silence took on a sound of its own. A constant booming that never seemed to rise or fall or end, but carried on forever unless she could just-

_Graves? Which part?_

Screaming. She never expected screaming to replace the barely-felt earthquake rumble of his occlumency. Screaming so loud and hoarse her own throat felt shredded in sympathy, fingernails biting deep into her palms. Screaming that went on and on as blood splashed over bare stone floors and once-sharp knives sawed through flesh turned to meat, joints cracking, twisted and pulled apart between eager hands like the wishbone from a Thanksgiving turkey.

 _Stop. Stop it,_ Graves screamed. _Make her stop._

Screaming that didn't end even as Grindelwald remained seated, relaxed in his manacles, his smile growing and growing until it was wide as a goblin's, until it split his face in half, his skin peeling back silently as more blood, more screams poured out of it-

"Queenie, aren't you supposed to be at work?"

She sucked in a deep breath, the morning newspaper crumpling in her fists as the memory of the dream faded. Peeking over the top of the paper, she saw Tina waiting by the front door, sporting an expression of mild confusion beneath a good deal of glistening muck.

"Aren't _you_?" she called from her comfortable spot on the couch, forcing herself to relax as she folded the newspaper over. "What the heck happened?"

Tina grimaced, turning away to take off her formerly-blue hat and coat. "Theodore Cross happened. His rats explode now, didn't you hear?"

"That ain't mud, is it," she said, pulling her bare feet in closer to her pajama-clad body with a wriggle of fresh disgust.

"No." Even in stockings, Tina squelched when she walked. "No, it's not. And no, charming it off didn't work."

It took less than an eye blink to turn up the volume and hear all the gory details streaming through Tina's mind—Cross's lab, the skinless rats, the booby-trap they'd narrowly avoided, the No-Maj bystanders who'd gotten the scare of a lifetime before the obliviators could take care of them. Queenie quickly pulled away from her sister's mind and, sensitive to the uncharacteristic way Tina trudged and sighed, rose from the couch for the first time that afternoon.

"Get those things off and into the bucket, and I'll see what I can do for 'em," she said, herding Tina towards the bathroom. A wave of her wand summoned the small laundry tub reserved for stubborn stains and delicates, as well as a clean bath towel and wash cloth.

"I have to get back downtown," Tina protested weakly, careful not to touch the towel as it drifted past her. "I just wanted a change of clothes."

"There's no point to that unless you wash your hair." Queenie reached out and almost touched a sticky hank before she thought better of it. "You're all lumpy. And you smell like rat guts, sweetie," she said with a grimace. "Trust me, you'll feel better after a shower. And maybe a snack."

"Just a shower," Tina said with a stern look, but a light had come back into her eyes as she closed the bathroom door between them.

Once the water was running and the tub was floating a less-smelly distance ahead of her, Queenie couldn't help feeling happy to have something definite to do. Her heart went out to her sister, but she'd been at loose ends all day—Tina had left early like usual, she'd had a nightmare as usual, and instead of going over to Graves's apartment she'd remained home. There was nothing left to clean, there weren't any groceries to buy—rather than mope, she'd picked up a few things the day before—and she didn't have anywhere important to be. Boring, but she preferred it to turning up on his doorstep as if nothing had happened. Never mind that someone so easily agitated needed distance...

"A witch has to have some pride," she muttered as she shrank the tub enough so that it would fit under the kitchen faucet.

Tina's startled shriek made her jump.

"Sorry, sorry," she called pointlessly, rushing to turn off the tap. "Oops."

She could feel Tina's irritation at the sudden cold shock, but it was gone by the time the box of extra strength laundry soap zoomed over from the cupboard to pour a healthy portion of powder into the bucket. A brisk stir was all that was needed to set it to bubbling.

As the scent of fresh lemon began to mask the meatier odor of dead rat, Queenie returned to the couch and her discarded newspaper, idly wondering if Graves did his own laundry. An apartment that had been professionally charmed to resist dust and dirt? Not to mention those potshots he'd taken at her in the park… Something told her he left his laundry for others to deal with.

The thought wasn't without a degree of irony as she skimmed column after column of the newspaper, slouching deeper into the springy couch as she looked for any mention of that poor woman from Graves's memory. Certainly a number of people would say she wasn't Queenie's concern, but that didn't silence the voice of responsibility that spoke up whenever she found herself idle.

The voice of guilt.

If only she could say it was another thing she'd borrowed completely from him. There was no question that she'd probed too deeply and seen too much when she'd at last tuned in to his frequency. She must've washed her hands at least two dozen times since leaving that wretched kitchen; even after she'd finally scrubbed away the tacky feeling of blood, his pleading had lingered on in her mind like the smell of a corpse on her clothes. But she couldn't charm her mind clean—all she could do was endure the record skipping for however long it went on. No stranger to his screaming, thanks to Grindelwald, but she could've done without hearing him beg as well.

 _Make her stop_ , he'd said in his memory.

Her memory now, and an addition to a well established nightmare she really hadn't needed.

The _Ghost_ crinkled loudly as she opened it, resisting the urge to go wash her hands again. When that wasn't enough, she shifted to sit cross-legged, pinning her hands to the couch with her knees, the newspaper hovering before her and turning its pages by magic.

If she felt so bad as this, how might Graves feel?

"Are you alright?"

"Huh?"

Tina stood a few feet away, frowning. Wrapped up in her blue bathrobe, wet hair slicked back and curling around her ears, she looked like a young girl again. Even her concern felt younger, more like what she'd aimed at Queenie countless times at Ilvermorny.

"You haven't been your usual self lately." Her slippers clapped softly against the floor as she drew closer. "I mean, look. You're reading the paper, and not even the funnies," she said, but when Queenie didn't reply immediately her teasing smile faltered. "And you're not at work. I thought the filing job with Carraway was going okay, but it's been a couple of days now. Aren't you feeling alright?"

"I got yesterday and today off," she said belatedly, looking back down at the paper. "They're in court or something. All day. I must've forgot to tell you." Fae border control issues in Central Park; No-Maj Prohibition agents storm magical nightclub by accident; Jersey girl mistakes baby chimera in front yard for stuffed animal. Nothing at all about a missing woman.

The couch dipped when Tina sat down beside her as she gave up and flipped through to the classifieds. Water droplets scattered over the knee of her pajama pants as Tina bumped shoulders with her. "Really, what's going on? You've been quiet all week," she said, glancing at the paper. Buy and sell; lonely hearts; help wanted ads for everything from cleaners to jewelry store clerks. "More bad dreams?"

Denial was on the tip of her tongue, but was Tina really so far off? Certainly Grindelwald had yet to fade from view. In fact, her arrangement with Graves seemed only to have brought him back to the forefront. And for the rest of it… that same damn arrangement kept her from telling Tina about the unfortunate mystery woman even if it didn't keep her from relating what Graves had said to her in the park. But then she'd have to explain how he'd come to say those things at all, and what she was doing with him, and-

And, and, and. It was the same problem as before.

"Yeah, maybe," she said quietly as the paper folded itself neatly up before dropping to the floor. "I guess I'm just feeling pretty useless." That was as close to the truth as she could get, and her sincerity wasn't lost on Tina.

High notes of concern and confusion rose and fell like birdsong in Tina's mind as she wrapped an arm around Queenie's shoulders. "You're not, though you should really try a drowsy draft. I know you don't like them, but a solid night's sleep could do you some good," she said, before a third note of regret twined around the other two. "Don't worry, everything'll work out for you like… well, you'll see. Just wait."

Queenie didn't need to be nearly as good at legilimency as she was to know what inspired that lower register of hesitation in her sister's head. No, things didn't work out for her _like always_. Or _like they're supposed to_. Not any more, not when Grindelwald's crimes still haunted her, not when Jacob still greeted her with the same smile he bestowed on all his regular clients. Maybe with a teaspoon more fondness. Maybe.

"You're probably right," she said, forcing a smile before she gave Tina a smacking kiss on the cheek and got up. "You go get dressed and I'll make you that snack, okay? C'mon already, there's only room for one set of lazy bones here." She grabbed her hand and swung it side to side, hoping to distract at least one of them from continued thoughts of Queenie's failures. Tina didn't know half of it, and even half was too much for her to bear at the moment.

 

 

Once her sister was fed, dried, redressed, and safely packed off back to MACUSA to rejoin her partner, Queenie returned to the newspaper. The afternoon edition—by the time she'd seen Tina out the door it was waiting on the doorstep. Yet nothing much seemed to have changed over the course of the day; despite her best efforts, Queenie found her attention wandering again and again.

"Tina would've been able to figure this out in a snap," she muttered, leafing through the pages and looking at all the pictures with a weary eye. If only she'd had some way to ask her sister for advice on finding a missing person. Or did she have that backwards? She knew where the woman had met her end, even if she didn't know where she'd ended up. Putting a name to a face was her problem; doubtless Tina, a trained auror, would know how to go about doing that. Hadn't Graves said as much?

"Stupid," she grumbled, and if pressed she wouldn't have been able to say whether that had been directed at him or herself. Slouching back against the couch's arm, she flicked her hand so the newspaper floated over her, turning its own pages as she fidgeted with the drawstring of her pants. She'd barely made it into the international section, where discussion of delays in Grindelwald's trial ran rampant, when she gave up.

No sooner did she banish the paper to the other side of the couch, the pages scattering across the floor with a sound like dead leaves blown by the wind, than there was a knock at the door.

"Back already?" she called, humor fraying against the edge of her frustration as she got to her feet. "You weren't gone long enough for me to miss… you."

She'd been so sure it was Tina at the door, maybe playing at bashful after forgetting something, that it hadn't occurred to her it might be someone else. Her legilimency had been reeled in tighter than usual since the incident in Graves's kitchen; only when she had to, like when she'd nudged the cooks at Pulchalski's diner to hurry it up for their favorite regular, was she extending her power. She'd had enough of human misery lately to last her at least a few days, and what she'd heard of Tina's morning had only reinforced that belief.

"Good afternoon, Miss Goldstein," Graves said with his typical coolness, and though she knew her legilimency wouldn't have helped her anyway in identifying him, she reached out instinctively nonetheless.

 _She opened the door_ , she heard him think in booming notes of relief and surprise, so loud she pulled back, both magically and physically. Her shock at his sudden appearance—and with his occlumency shield nowhere in sight—was enough to make her want to shut the door in his face.

It didn't help that there was nothing overtly apologetic in his bearing. Though his mind was thrumming with a hundred apprehensions and a patent awareness of how close she was to giving him the broom, his posture was perfect as usual. His broad shoulders were anything but slumped, and his gaze was direct, even challenging, rather than avoidant; in the seconds she frowned at him, his mind quieted to a deliberate stillness. Not occlumency, precisely, but it felt much the same. Wrinkles ironed out.

She'd accused him of having poor self-control; now she couldn't see how she'd ever thought so.

 _But of course that's what he'd want you to think_. Her skepticism always sounded like her sister.

"May I come in?" he asked when it became obvious she wasn't going to say anything. "I need to speak with you."

There was a creak as she twisted the doorknob and dithered. She wasn't dressed, and she hadn't so much as glanced in the mirror that morning, and she didn't want to talk to him. Not after how he'd treated her.

 _Not after what you've seen?_ asked a surprised voice in her ear. Her sister again, but far easier to dismiss. Regardless of what he'd done in the past, the fact was Graves wouldn't hurt her. Not when he so obviously needed her.

Case in point: waiting for her to decide whether to shoo him away or let him in wore at Graves, if the way his gloved fist clenched and knocked lightly against his thigh was any indication. "Please," he said at last. "Your neighbors-"

"Alright." She left the door open but didn't so much as offer to take his coat and scarf as she tossed over her shoulder, "It's not like I got anything better to do." Nice as it was to hear him say _please_ for once without prompting, it wasn't the sole thing that convinced her to give him another shot. No, the circles around his eyes that had only darkened since she'd last seen him two days ago proved once again that her soft heart would keep getting her into trouble.

She could practically hear Tina's exasperated sigh as Graves followed her in, his thoughts a renewed but faint warbling as he took in the room. Instead of taking a seat in the chair across from her as he had the last time, he remained standing as he stripped off his gloves. If he'd worn a hat, he'd have it in hand.

His ears were pink, she noticed before he spoke.

"You were right."

"Really? Neat. What about?" she promptly chirped, but he'd expected her to be snippy; there wasn't a single sour note to be heard.

"About what I could do to my reputation without Grindelwald's assistance." His mouth quirked briefly downward as he clasped his gloves tightly in both hands, gaze drifting to the window behind her, thoughts like the tide breaking against the shore as he went over his practiced lines. "I spoke out of turn when I questioned your expertise, which was the act of a complete-"

"Schmuck?"

Interrupting him was like lobbing a stone into the water; irritation rippled outwards. "I wouldn't say-"

"How 'bout 'jackass?'" A rock this time, large enough to really disrupt things. When his attention snapped to her, she said brightly, "I'm just trying to be helpful. You know I can't resist." If her tone was friendly, her manner was anything but. Arch as an empress, she lounged against one arm of the couch, chin resting in her palm, and it was while she was thinking up other things to call him that his occlumency shield dropped down between them with all the muffling force of a pile of snow dropping off a roof and onto an unsuspecting pedestrian.

Surely she wasn't the first witch to call him something mean, she thought with a roll of her eyes. "I was barely listenin', you know, but whatever. You made your point. And you might as well sit down already. Stop looming."

"You..." The leather of his gloves squeaked as he wrung them slowly before he perched on the edge of one of the two chairs, his heavy coat unbuttoning itself. Clearly he hadn't expected her to know exactly what he was about by showing up with his mind on display, ready for her to pick through and see how sorry he was. He'd fooled her before that way, she wasn't going to let herself be suckered again.

"Well, what were you gonna say?" His shield hissed and wavered like a summer storm, with rain a patter against the windows one second, a downpour the next. Impossible to ignore completely. "You're a complete what?"

"A bastard." His eyebrows knit together in a tremendous frown that was almost too severe to be genuine. "I was going to say I've been a complete bastard," he said without a hint of irony or awareness for how surreal it was to hear him speak so.

"Oh." She'd never been one to take real enjoyment in other people's misfortune; the pinch of satisfaction she'd gotten out of wrong-footing him for mistreating her evaporated quick as a spritz of water over a hot frying pan. "I wouldn't go _that_ far," she said, quieter than before.

"I'm not used to being wrong, Miss Goldstein." He stared steadily into her eyes as he said, "And since I met you, I've been wrong more times than I can count. I've never been a man incapable of admitting when he's erred, and I won't become one now.

"I owe you an apology."

So seldom had a man apologized to her for anything that, without thinking, she leaned against his mind to gauge his honesty. But there was only his shield, the buzz making her bones vibrate, and his serious expression softening with bemusement as he felt her press.

She sat up straight, hands dropping into her lap demurely as she pulled entirely away from his mind. "You been through a lot," she said, embarrassment heating her cheeks. "I'm sure you're not normally so- Anyway, you really don't have to say anything else. I get it."

"There's no excuse." Tossing his gloves onto the coffee table, he reached into an inner pocket of his coat. Fumbling his wallet open one-handedly and leaning forward, he said, "For what I've forced you into.

Slips of paper glided out of his wallet, growing larger in mid-air between them.

"I asked you to use your legilimency to figure out why I couldn't remember," he said as the bearer bonds fluttered in a nonexistent breeze over the coffee table. "I won't lie and say I like the result, but there's no denying you fulfilled your end of the bargain."

"That ain't what you asked for at all," she blurted out, eyes wide as the fully-grown bonds arranged themselves before her. Thin and fine as a butterfly's wings, they shone with gold leaf. "You wanted something totally different, and I didn't do any of it. I barely heard-"

"You did enough," he snapped, the bonds shivering like flower petals facing down a storm. One heavy exhalation later, the funnel cloud disappeared as he tried again with more restraint. "You accomplished more than anyone else. I might be a jackass," he said with a lift of his brows she'd call wry if he hadn't been so dour, "but at least I'm a jackass who keeps his word."

With their wax seals glistening in the light, the bearer bonds drifted near enough that she could make out the bank's coat of arms inscribed in the central medallion, a long-bodied dragon curling around the twin columns formed by Islay & Ivy's initials.

Now was her chance to get out of the mess she'd found herself in—like Tina said, things had worked out for her once again. She ought to seize the opportunity to take the ridiculous amount of money on offer and put an end to things. Sure, it was unlikely he'd agree to toss the confidentiality agreement, but it really wasn't in her best interest to push the issue. So long as he was sworn to secrecy regarding her legilimency, she ought to be more than happy to walk away two grand richer. And with an apology in her pocket from Percival Graves, of all people! Never mind that it was an extremely _limited_ apology…

 _Ought_ to. Worrying her lip, she reached out to trace her finger over a shiny _100_ filling a corner shield, struggling to ignore how much _you did enough_ felt the same as _there was nothing else you could've done_.

 _A truly excellent effort, Miss Goldstein,_ Grindelwald had thought, grin inhumanly wide as she wiped her bloody nose on a handkerchief.

They hadn't let her bring her wand in when she saw him. For good reason.

 _But you've fallen quite short of the mark._ A rivulet of blood rolled down from his nose; his tongue swiped over his upper lip, catching it before it could drip further. _A familiar sensation for you, I'm sure._

Oblivious to the dark turn her thoughts had taken, Graves stared past her towards the window, waiting, an unfamiliar dullness in his brown eyes. At his best he tended towards sternness and solemnity, and at his worst he was quick to assume the worst and respond with force, but even after panicking he'd never seemed so… lackluster.

She'd thought her dreams were bad.

"Are you okay?" she asked without thinking, wincing at the sudden high-pitched whine of static in his occlumency shield before it leveled off. "To keep lookin' into things all by your lonesome, I mean," she said quickly before he could respond with some sharp remark about how his well-being was none of her concern.

"If you're referring to my ability to find out what happened to that woman, then yes," he said unhurriedly, but if that troubling apathy was gone it was replaced instead with the vigor of a late autumn cold snap intent on a window box full of violets. "I'm more than capable of carrying out a basic investigation."

 _Unlike some_ , he might've said a day ago, but he didn't say it now.

Ears still ringing from her misstep, she decided all at once that she wasn't interested in knowing if he thought it. He'd apologized, she'd forgiven him; time to move on.

Besides, the newspapers scattered around the room would've backed him up, if only he'd known why they were there.

"Did you figure out who she is?" She caught how his eyes flicked away, downwards, how he frowned as if seeing the newspapers for the first time, and before he could lie she pressed on, gently as she could, "Do you even remember what she looks like? Or have you forgotten already?"

"No." A muscle jumped in his jaw, the scar rippling oddly with the movement, before he said again, "No."

Which questions was he answering? They were straight-forward enough, yet the fine hiss of static coming off him in fluctuating waves suggested not even he knew.

She wouldn't press. Not now, anyway, not when she remembered what he'd done the last time he'd lost his temper in her living room. Even if he'd fixed it afterwards, seeing everything in pieces once had been enough.

"Whichever it is, " she said, his equal in volume if not bitterness, "I'm sure we can agree that I probably remember better than you do."

The wooden arms of the chair creaked alarmingly before he relaxed his grip and tipped his head forward in silent acknowledgement.

Before she could reconsider, she plucked one of the bearer bonds from the air and shooed the rest like a flock of pigeons off a bench. With nowhere else to go, they hurried back to Graves, eager to return to his wallet.

"This has nothing to do with you," he said warily, making no move to secure nineteen-hundred dollars' worth of bonds that were nuzzling his coat front like kittens against their mother.

The image made her smile as much as her renewed determination. To hell with anyone else, she was tired of falling short of her own standards. "How can you say that when you're paying me every week to help you investigate?" She snapped the bond between her fingers like an over-starched bed sheet, ignoring the rest as they flitted back and forth confusedly until at last he released a dramatic sigh and pulled out his wallet a second time.

 

 

"Are you sure this is a good idea?" she called as she powdered her face and chose between sets of earrings. Too fancy. Too boring.

Graves had been waiting in the living room with a good deal more patience than she'd expected, but she must've hit a nerve because there was nothing patient in his tone. "Am I sure going to MACUSA before either of our memories degrades further is a good idea?" The floorboards were creaking nonstop—he must've been pacing. "Am I sure uncovering what else exactly Grindelwald was up to is a good idea? Am I sure being seen in public with you is a good idea?"

"Hey!" She hauled open the bedroom door to give him a pointed look, but it was ruined when her earring nudged her cheek and she had to tilt her head.

When she looked back, Graves's fit of temper had died off completely. He stood on the far side of the sofa, nearest the window, and only briefly considered her slantwise before casting a chary eye over Grindelwald's smirking front page mug shot before he stepped over the pile of newspapers. "There's at least a month between us and the crime," he said, "and we're not going to find any answers staying inside and combing through those."

"I meant tearin' off last-minute like this," she muttered, ducking her head as she blushed. What had she been thinking? Of course there wouldn't be anything in the _Ghost_ or _Wizard's Voice_ about the mystery woman, not after so long anyway. For that matter, who knew if she would've been in it at all? She might not even be a witch. "How do you know the guy-"

"Bertin Balcazar," he interrupted, summoning her coat from the rack and holding it out before she could so much as think _accio_.

"Yeah, him." Wand floating before her, she allowed Graves to help her with her coat. "Thanks," she said with a smile before slipping her wand in her pocket and winding her cream scarf around her neck. "How do you know he won't be busy? People have lives, you know."

"Most people," he corrected, surprising a laugh out of her as she summoned her handbag, but he quickly sobered and held out his arm. "If I need him, he won't be."

 _Somebody's sure of himself._ She took his arm, forcing herself to relax. It was no good stiffening up before disapparition, she'd learnt, better just to go with the flow. There was the typical twisting, inside-out feeling, but then instead of popping like normal into an alleyway or empty side street, there was a pressing heat that went on and on, as if she was being lowered into a volcano-

"Mercy Lewis!" she gasped when at last they reapparated. Knees weak, she clung tight to Graves to keep from falling. "What the hell was that?"

"Apparition." Eyebrows furrowed, he regarded her with more than a tablespoon of confusion but didn't pull away. "How do you feel?"

"Like a shirt that's been left under a hot iron for too long," she muttered, fanning herself weakly as she glanced around and shivered in the abrupt cold.

They were in an office that looked no different from the hundreds she'd seen in her career but for how empty it was. The large desk before her was clear of clutter; the glass-faced cabinets that flanked the walls were barren but for a couple of outdated volumes of _Brooms, Bans, & Bylaws_; the filing cabinet in the corner, normally a reliable source of audible crankiness, was silent. Besides her own unsteady breathing and the background static of Graves's occlumency shield, there was no other noise to be heard.

Not in the room, at least—the dust bunnies under the chairs and on the narrow windowsill were too well-behaved. Beyond its walls, however, she could hear the usual unhappy hum of those unlucky enough to work the weekend. Citations and fines, griping about overtime, _I have to get my TPS reports in before Mr. Lumbergh notices_ …

"No sudden craving for metal? Nails, staples, fountain pens?"

"No," she said vaguely before mentally twisting the dial down low enough to have a conversation. At least she felt restored enough for it. "This ain't your office. It ain't even your floor."

"Every MLE floor is the director's floor," he said, dropping his pointed gaze from her face to her hand where it still clung tight to his sleeve. When she let it go, he brushed once at his coat before heading towards the closed door.

"But this ain't the aurors'." A corridor, equally empty as the office they'd left, stretched before them. Every thirty feet or so there was another closed door boasting gold plates that listed locations rather than surnames of occupants.

 _Philadelphia-Camden-Wilmington_ read the closest.

"It's… auror-adjacent." Fingers twitching as he forged ahead, he didn't so much as glance at any of the doors. _Boston-Worcester-Manchester_.

"Then why didn't you pop us right there?" she asked, falling behind. Not because she was still shaky on her feet, but to carefully examine every plate he ignored. While running coffee every which way had led her to a certain degree of roaming, she'd swear she'd never been on this particular floor before. Where were they? There weren't any doorknobs.

"And rattle every link in the great MACUSA gossip chain?" He cut her a glance over his shoulder but kept up the killer pace. "I think not."

"Wet blanket," she said, scrunching up her nose. _Washington-Baltimore-Arlington_. The largest cities in the northeastern states; she bet one of these doors would list New York and Jersey cities next. Something to do with population? There were too many departments organized along those lines. It didn't help that she couldn't hear any conversation from the rooms beyond, likely due to muffling charms, but she could feel minds hard at work. It would be so simple to reach out and skim through one, pull the answer that way.

But that wasn't any fun.

Halting before a door, he turned towards her. "I'm not about to risk direct access to the building's interior just to save you a walk." Ostensibly waiting, but his tightly-fisted hand trembled by his side as she caught up, heels ringing against the floorboards. "The last thing I need is to give the president a reason to have me officially replaced," he said in a harsh whisper. "It was bad enough bringing you along. The spells that keep the building secure have very specific loopholes, and from what you described I narrowly squeezed you in through one. If I hadn't…" he shook his head, grimacing as he looked away.

There weren't any windows in the hallway, she realized as she watched his gloved hands flex.

"Should you've brought me along in the first place?" she asked, turning to the door he'd stopped by. _New York-Newark-Bridgeport_. As she'd suspected. "What about that tricky legal requirement stuff in the-"

Graves was capable of all kinds of nonverbal magic, but the expression he aimed at her said _silencio_ loud and clear.

"Okay, fine, forget I asked," she said, hands up. "Really though, where are we? This ain't anywhere I've ever been."

"I should hope not." That was all he gave her before he pushed the door open, faint white sparks crackling around his hand where it made contact with the wood. The door stuck in the frame for the second it took the sparks to turn gold—another security measure, no doubt—and then without a creak from the hinges it swung open wide enough to admit Graves.

Queenie'd heard about some of the nastier alarms in the building, but he hadn't told her to stay in the hall and her curiosity was powerful enough to make slipping in after him sound like a good idea. She hung back, taking in the sight of the half-dozen tidy rows of desks facing away from the door, each manned by a hunched over witch or wizard. Their low conversation, punctuated by the non-stop clacking of typewriters, died at once as Graves strode down the center aisle that divided the room in half. His target was a smartly-dressed dark-haired woman standing two feet up in the air before a map of the tri-state area that covered the entire wall.

"Are you supposed to be in here?" she asked, not bothering to turn around as Graves halted by her side.

After what he'd said in her apartment, Queenie expected him to snap back and start issuing orders or making demands. Instead, to her surprise, he simply said, "Just say 'allowed,' Crowe." Staring up at the map as lights played over its surface, she couldn't see his expression, but he didn't sound at all peeved as he continued, "We both know that's what you mean."

Her croak of a laugh was loud enough it startled a few people, but everyone quickly set their noses back to the grindstone as she turned on her invisible platform to look up at Graves, wand in a loose grip at her side. "I thought you were that nosy brat, back to tell me my business." Despite her magical elevation, her eyes were not quite level with Graves's. Neither was her sardonic expression a match for his practiced neutrality. "You're lucky you caught me on a slow day, otherwise I'd toss you out on your ear."

 _Who is she?_ Queenie racked her brain, but the only Crowe she knew was Magali Crowe, a surveillor.

Unless…

With a silent cry of _uncle_ , Queenie reached out with her legilimency to at last determine where exactly they were. Sometimes when she was surrounded by so many hard-thinking types, filtering out the rest of a room to get a sense of a particular mind was less like tuning a radio and more like walking through a party hall. You didn't have to stand right next to the stage for yonks to figure out what tune the band was playing, it was just a matter of ignoring all the yammering going on around you.

No music this time, but the continuous _pop_ of fireworks exploding over the other end of a park.

A cheerful imagine that failed to bring a smile to her face as she pulled away from Servilia Crowe's mind full of cascading thoughts. At least she'd been on the right track in thinking they were somewhere to do with population; even Graves's hint of _auror-adjacent_ made sense. Surveillance and Wizarding Resources certainly fell under that heading.

Really, she could sorta understand why Graves would come here. They _were_ looking for a missing person; why not head straight to the land of the ever-watching eyes for some direction?

 _Would'a been nice if he just said so,_ she thought nervously, eyeing the map and the woman before it. Exactly what kind of magic did these folks and their charms pick up on?

"Bert." Crowe snapped her fingers blindly behind her back at the rows of desks. The conversation Queenie had missed by snooping was over.

A dark head rose on the far right-side of the room. "Ma'am?"

"I'm loaning you out. Enjoy your day parole." With a dismissive wave of her hand aimed at either Bert or—more daringly—Graves, Crowe turned back to the map where lights bloomed and faded, lighting up different sections of New York with two of the five colors Queenie used to see every day she entered MACUSA headquarters.

Before Grindelwald, the Threat Advisory System had played a starring role in many of her more anxious dreams. While Tina still dreamt of trying to take her auror practical without a wand or robes, Queenie had found herself walking to the elevators like normal only for a siren to go off as everyone around her froze. The pointers on the threat measurer in the entry hall would spin round and round before settling firmly on ruby red; everyone would turn to her, wands raised, and scream-

Queenie jumped at the sound of a chair cracking against a desk; the man who'd been sitting in it, presumably Bertin Balcazar, hunched his shoulders and glanced sheepishly around the room, giving a wave to his unimpressed coworkers as he gathered things up from his work station. He hurried to fall in line behind Graves, who had left Crowe and the map to proceed back up the aisle.

"Shall I tell Philadelphia Goodspeed 'hello' for you when I see her?" Crowe called over her shoulder.

The piercing whine of static from Graves's shield made Queenie's teeth clack together as though she'd missed a step on the staircase, but it was gone so quickly she wondered if she'd imagined it. His blank expression didn't help matters either; it remained there as he pushed the door open and marched out, leaving her and Mr. Balcazar to hurrying to catch up.

 

 

Rather than take the elevator down—or maybe up, she had no clue which floor they were on—to his office, Graves led them swiftly back to the empty office he'd apparated into. And rather than ask him why, Queenie held her tongue.

For once, her patience was rewarded.

"Mr. Balcazar has a very valuable talent," he said after the anti-eavesdropping charm settled over the room. "He can draw."

"Oh really?" There were only two chairs, but since Graves immediately gravitated towards the window, she didn't feel remotely bad about helping herself to one of them. "Like the comic strips in the paper?"

Bert wagged his head side to side as he set down the armful of things he'd carried from his desk. "Sorta? Not really. More like portraits," he said, laying down a couple of pencils next to a small spiral notepad. A tap of his wand enlarged it to the size of a large cutting board. "I do people." He glanced at her, blushing, and nudged his thick-framed black glasses up his nose. "I mean, I don't _do_ -"

"He makes composite sketches," Graves interrupted, his dour look putting an end to Bert's stammering. "They've proven very useful in certain circumstances were eye witnesses are the only leads. Dark magic detection only goes so far," he added before turning away, "as do pensieves."

If understanding were lightbulbs then the space over Queenie's head was lit up like Times Square. "I getcha. So you want me to tell you exactly what I remember?" _That's why he didn't ask Crowe herself for help. They work in the_ now _, not the_ then _._ Not to mention all the complicated questions a pensieve would stir up.

"Uh, not exactly," Bert said as he hung his jacket off the back of the chair opposite her and sat down, reaching for his enlarged sketchpad and replacing his wand with a pencil. "I know that sounds hinky, but it's not meant to be identical, just close enough someone might recognize the person you're looking for."

"A memory-jogger," she said, nodding again, careful to keep the grip on her purse light as she asked, casual as she could, "Are you gonna use magic to pull the face outta my head? Like with that mind-reading spell, lili-whatever-"

Bert, to his credit, shot Graves a look when he snorted. Luckily for him, Graves didn't see it, looking out the window as he was. "No, miss, no legilimency here," he said, readying his pencil and paper. "Just the old-fashioned question-and-"

"No questions."

Countless hours of practice in not reacting to the secret things she overheard served Queenie in good stead; she did not burst out laughing at the way Bert's face froze, his eyes comically large behind his glasses. All sorts of screeching defenses about his artistic method and Graves's lack of understanding of it rang through his mind, but he gave voice to none of them.

Apparently Queenie wasn't the only person who knew when there was no point to trying to convince Graves to budge. Not when he used that tone, anyway.

"…Just the old-fashioned descriptive method," Bert tried again, adjusting his grip on his pencil. "Tell me what you first noticed about this person."

 _The bloody mess of her forehead_ was absolutely not the right answer to that question, true though it was. "Her eyes," she began, and as Bert prompted her now and then for further characteristics, she carefully reframed Graves's memory as her own, picking through it, converting sound to image. She'd often endeavored to do the opposite, reminding herself daily how the thoughts and feelings she collected from others were _not_ hers—much of the time she'd wanted nothing to do with them—but to her surprise it wasn't so hard to pretend. Carefully shading the truth for years was paying off yet again.

Yet part of it, she could admit privately, was that Bert reminded her of Jacob. Sure, they had similar coloring, though Bert's brown eyes tended towards owlish and he was prone to nervous stammering, but that wasn't all. He had an open, trustworthy face. A Jacob face, she thought, nice-looking and easy to talk to.

"We're almost done," he said, with a reassuring smile when he saw that she'd wilted slightly. "Honest."

She couldn't bring herself to correct his mistaken assumption. _Not while I'm meant to be playin' a part_ , she thought as he made some slight adjustments with his pencil. And definitely not with Graves in the room, who was so familiar with her brushes with the law. Jacob, as Tina had reminded her so many times, was firmly out of bounds.

There were too many things that were forbidden. How she came to know what all she knew; the contract that had sent shivers rolling down her neck whenever she got too close to disclosing information that wasn't hers to spill. They hadn't discussed beforehand how Queenie would even manage to talk to Bert, Graves had just blindly thrust her into the situation without warning.

For all that Graves seemed to have a plan in mind, Queenie suspected he hadn't thought things through as thoroughly as he ought to have. Did he expect her to go around listening in on every mind in New York in order to keep up with him? Or was he acting on instinct? Reaching out into the dark, praying he'd find a solid lead and not a steel trap to snap his hand off at the wrist?

She knew exactly how that felt, and she feared the answer was too obvious. Graves was a cold statue installed by the window, determinedly staring out at the city. An act, of course—how could she think otherwise when she so vividly recalled the terror that had choked him at the sight of that poor woman bashing her head into the countertop? The initial paralyzing helplessness to stop her, or stop Grindelwald?

And then the surety that came of being backed into a corner with no escape, of there being only one option and hating it. Hating Grindelwald, hating his helplessness, hating _himself_ -

No wonder it hadn't occurred to her to be afraid of him despite seeing firsthand—and wasn't that a laugh—what he was capable of.

Graves's stillness vanished for an instant as his head jerked to the side, towards them, before he checked the motion.

 _Oh kiddo,_ her sister would despair. _Back at it again._

"Alright, what do you think?" Bert tore off the page and held it up, displaying the portrait they'd come up with together. "Any other adjustments?"

"No, I-" Queenie took a deep breath, reaching out for the paper to boggle at it properly. "It's perfect. It looks just like her."

In simple black-and-white like the wanted posters the aurors put out, Bert's portrait of the mystery woman stared back at her. She had a slow blink, Queenie saw after a moment; it matched the utter lack of emotion in her expression. Bert's smooth lines and slight shading had produced an oval face with full cheeks, a young face free of wrinkles; narrow dark eyebrows arched with a natural irony over small black eyes. Her dark bobbed hair was tidier than Queenie recalled it until a magical breeze stirred the locks to a messiness that made her stomach lurch.

It hadn't been anything so innocent as the wind that disordered her appearance.

Unthinkingly, she traced a finger along the finely looped chains of the necklace the woman wore. "I didn't know anyone could draw so good," she said faintly. So transfixed by the picture, she didn't hear Bert answer. Queenie's memory—Graves's memory—of when last she'd seen her played out again and again in her mind as she stared down at her face, as devoid as life as it was possible to be.

She wondered about her forehead, if maybe she'd had a beauty mark or a mole, something obscured by the blood, by her shattered skull-

"Is that really how you remember her?" Graves asked.

Queenie jerked her head up from where she'd been slumped in the chair, remembering. Bert was nowhere in sight; dismissed by Graves, she could hear his anxious mind hurrying away, back down the corridor and to his day job. "You paid him?"

"He performed a service." Graves gripped the top of the chair back, where Bert had so recently sat; tipped his head towards the sheet of paper laying in Queenie's lap. "That's the woman you saw? You said it was perfect."

She frowned at the accusation in his voice. "Yeah. It looks just like her. Are you sure Bertie isn't-"

"It looks nothing like her," he said. His knuckles flashed white for an instant before he forcibly relaxed his grip. "And that necklace-"

"It looks _exactly_ like her. I didn't make her up, I got her from you." Again, she regarded the portrait. The full mouth, the round chin. The necklace that Graves took such offense to was the product of Bert encouraging her for details about the woman's clothes, pressing for anything meaningful. Pointless to explain how any of those things sounded different from their opposites, how the memory of a heart-shaped face rang in a higher key than an oval one.

"Maybe your memory ain't nothing to write home about, but mine's always been top-notch," she said, unable to keep the defensiveness out of her voice as she continued, "Now, unless you think I-"

"I'm not… _criticizing_ you," he said, jaw tightening as he released the chair to vaguely wave a hand at her. At the portrait. At all of it, she suspected, judging from the stormy hiss of his occlumency shield. He wasn't angry, she realized as he stepped away, back towards the window. Retreated. "Only…"

"She's not the woman you remember." The horror that dawned on her was delayed, but when at last it bloomed it was bloody red and sickening. "You remember someone else."

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This is, unfortunately, the end of what I have written so far. I cannot say I'll be updating on a weekly or even bi-weekly basis now. My hope is to finish it, but I've no idea when that will be. I know my writing habits too well at this point to make any promises at all.
> 
> Thank you for reading.
> 
> Feedback encouraged.


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